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That reminds me of that argument that scammers purposefully introduce spelling mistakes and other types of obvious red flags because it filters out the smart re

by pyduan 13y ago

That reminds me of that argument that scammers purposefully introduce spelling mistakes and other types of obvious red flags because it filters out the smart recipients and only leaves people who are likely to be gullible enough to take the bait and not investigate too much. I wonder if there isn't something similar at play here, with the unprofessional-looking style actually just being a case of tailoring your communication to your market...

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Not effective then - the guys at Kickstarter are not dumb.
- pyduan 13y ago
  Kickstarter is not the one who needs the convincing at this stage, it's the potential backers. Case in point, this post does not link to an official Kickstarter investigation, but to a spontaneous one made by a random commenter.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Ok, so 'Kickstarter backers are not dumb'. Either way the project gets caught at an early stage and cancelled.
    - pyduan 13y ago
      Citation needed. 1/ There are gullible (not necessarily dumb, by the way) people everywhere, why would Kickstarter's user base be exempt from that? Besides, Kickstarter is fairly mainstream now, so there's no reason to think it's only frequented by well-informed technology enthousiasts. The point is that they're trying to target the most gullible fraction of the website's user base, not that all of it consists of naive people. 2/ You claim it's not effective. However, it looks like they're close to reaching their goal with 300+ backers and almost 40k in pledges, so it seems to me like it works. 3/ "Either way the project gets caught at an early stage and cancelled." This doesn't seem true. This project hasn't been taken down so far, and it looks like they were only discovered today after having run for long enough to collect 40k in pledges. Had these (alledged) scammers been more modest (40k goal, earlier deadline) they would have gotten away with it. Besides, Kickstarter has had several cases of fraud and scam recently, so it looks like their Trust&Safety procedure has not fully matured yet (which is normal since they've recently grown big enough that this is enough of a concern to create a dedicated department). This is a concern big crowdsourcing platforms are starting to face, and for working in the fraud detection space and often discussing these matters with other tech companies I can say it's still something fairly new to them. 4/ All this discussion is completely besides the original point I was trying to make. Whether this particular instance is going to go through or not, my point was that there is something interesting about scammers in that they seem to (consciously or not) have their own culture and implicit codes, one of which being this very specific type of communication that seems egregious to most of us but could drive better conversion among their target population. I thought this was an interesting/amusing thought, but you're free to disagree.
    - pseut 13y ago
      You're missing the point, because what you'd need to claim is "there are no dumb backers on kickstarter." Even if kickstarter backers are smart on average, the point of the spelling mistakes, etc., is to find only the dumb ones.
      - mathattack 13y ago
        I've seen some research on internet scams that talk about how a lot of the point of the initial BS is to weed out the skeptical people, because that's not the target audience. Their target audience is the gullible.
      - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
        I think I got that point. But if there are ANY smart backers in the very-public Kickstarter community, then the project (should be) cancelled before any harm is done. Kickstarter is an acutely bad place to put scams of this sort, if the community effectively serves to quash them.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      As with any population, Kickstarter backers definitely also contain the gullible target audience that spammers want. Why do you think that it's special? Maybe it was in the early days, but now it's just as mass-market as the audience watching TV 'special sales'.

by pyduan 13y ago

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Not effective then - the guys at Kickstarter are not dumb.

pyduan 13y ago
Kickstarter is not the one who needs the convincing at this stage, it's the potential backers. Case in point, this post does not link to an official Kickstarter investigation, but to a spontaneous one made by a random commenter.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Ok, so 'Kickstarter backers are not dumb'. Either way the project gets caught at an early stage and cancelled.
  - pyduan 13y ago
    Citation needed. 1/ There are gullible (not necessarily dumb, by the way) people everywhere, why would Kickstarter's user base be exempt from that? Besides, Kickstarter is fairly mainstream now, so there's no reason to think it's only frequented by well-informed technology enthousiasts. The point is that they're trying to target the most gullible fraction of the website's user base, not that all of it consists of naive people. 2/ You claim it's not effective. However, it looks like they're close to reaching their goal with 300+ backers and almost 40k in pledges, so it seems to me like it works. 3/ "Either way the project gets caught at an early stage and cancelled." This doesn't seem true. This project hasn't been taken down so far, and it looks like they were only discovered today after having run for long enough to collect 40k in pledges. Had these (alledged) scammers been more modest (40k goal, earlier deadline) they would have gotten away with it. Besides, Kickstarter has had several cases of fraud and scam recently, so it looks like their Trust&Safety procedure has not fully matured yet (which is normal since they've recently grown big enough that this is enough of a concern to create a dedicated department). This is a concern big crowdsourcing platforms are starting to face, and for working in the fraud detection space and often discussing these matters with other tech companies I can say it's still something fairly new to them. 4/ All this discussion is completely besides the original point I was trying to make. Whether this particular instance is going to go through or not, my point was that there is something interesting about scammers in that they seem to (consciously or not) have their own culture and implicit codes, one of which being this very specific type of communication that seems egregious to most of us but could drive better conversion among their target population. I thought this was an interesting/amusing thought, but you're free to disagree.
  - pseut 13y ago
    You're missing the point, because what you'd need to claim is "there are no dumb backers on kickstarter." Even if kickstarter backers are smart on average, the point of the spelling mistakes, etc., is to find only the dumb ones.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      I've seen some research on internet scams that talk about how a lot of the point of the initial BS is to weed out the skeptical people, because that's not the target audience. Their target audience is the gullible.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      I think I got that point. But if there are ANY smart backers in the very-public Kickstarter community, then the project (should be) cancelled before any harm is done. Kickstarter is an acutely bad place to put scams of this sort, if the community effectively serves to quash them.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    As with any population, Kickstarter backers definitely also contain the gullible target audience that spammers want. Why do you think that it's special? Maybe it was in the early days, but now it's just as mass-market as the audience watching TV 'special sales'.