"If there is any chance that Rachel will receive spam from a stalker on her project, she should not create one."<p>WTF. I'm sorry guys. If there is any chance your blog post may incite trolls or spammers please refrain from making that post.<p>This makes no sense. Better response would be to try and work with the person and figure out some kind of solution. Sure banning people who attract spam works but in the long run it will cause some serious karma fallout. This is customer service 101.
<i>META</i><p>OK everyone. You might have noticed that Hacker News has gone downhill lately. A common pattern is for the number one comment to be some vaguely negative and uninteresting post. In this case, it's also an inflammatory post that wrongly blames the victim.<p>I'm friends with Rachel and the stalker dude is real. I was uselessly harassed by him because I spoke at Extreme Futurist Fest. He's real, he's crazy, and sometimes the police aren't effective.<p>Please be nice everyone. Think seriously before you make a comment. If it's one sentence long, it's probably a useless comment.<p>EDIT: When I made this comment, the #1 comment was unhelpful and just blamed Rachel. It has since been deleted by the poster, who perhaps reconsidered the utility of posting in this thread. Again, I don't want to be here, normally I would stay really far away from a thread like this, I just know that Rachel is a real person and I don't like to see trolls crapping all over this thread on this website that once meant so much to me.
Oh man, not this girl again. Let's just say she is known for being at the center of drama wherever she goes. She has a very long history of libel and public feuds related to her "music project." In one of many incidents, her and her mother sent DMCA takedown requests to LiveJournal based on negative information being posted by another user (completely unrelated to copyright).<p>Please do not give her attention. At least, don't give kickstarter negative attention over her complaint.<p><i>[Edit: Removed comment regarding mental illness and links to other forums]</i>
This is exactly the situation Kickstarter should be on top of. Imagine someone was going to make a hugely disruptive project and some BigCo PR firm hires a bunch of astroturfers to post 400 comments about how the project leader is a fraud.
Now we know the astroturfers don't even need to ward off backers, they can just get Kickstarter to shut the project down. Megaupload song vs. UMG sockpuppets anybody?
An open memo to Hacker News: Stories like this (e.g. the GitHub and AirBnB incidents) tend to draw out this ugly, mob-like attitude from Hacker News, and I'm sure none of us want to see it happen again.<p>Please, everybody, remember to be civil and give everybody the benefit of the doubt.
If it was me, and Kickstarter were my service, I'd have a hard time not banning someone making those claims, calling out an alleged stalker by name / email address on a public forum, and the language used.<p>Regardless, we have a user who, relevant or not, has a history of aggravating the entirety of the communities in which she's affiliated. Whether her stories are true or not is perhaps irrelevant, but if you don't want to become a community that is simply engrossed in drama, then you have to ban this person.<p>======================
Edit: Removed cross-posted comment from Reddit due to questions of authenticity.<p>Regardless, I've read enough of Haywire's comments over the years to have believed it, so I will say that remarks saying she obviously didn't write it are perhaps not so obvious.<p>Either way, I don't mean to impugn her character except to say that wherever she goes, she seems to draw a crowd and incite riotous behavior. If Kickstarter were my service, I'd ban that behavior. If it wasn't necessarily the right thing to do by her, or by the victim, whomever we deem it to be, it is perhaps the right thing to do for the Kickstarter website and community on the whole.<p>And please consider that aside from those taking vested interest in one side or the other, this banning makes Kickstarter a better place for those who would rather not be wrapped up in needless drama.
I'm going to chalk this one up to growing pains. Dealing with spam is a really difficult problem, especially in unusual cases like this. Their response definitely wasn't great, but if it was causing them a lot of trouble to keep up with the spam on that account, this might be a drain on their likely-small team and detrimental to everyone else using the site by taking their attention. This is a startup, not an enormous company we're talking about. Maybe project moderation tools would have helped with this, but they might not want project starters to be able to silence commenters. Before you bring out your pitchforks, realize that this is a small team of real people trying to do something huge, and have a million other concerns that they have to take care of, and this is a very hard and probably relatively infrequent problem.
This is incredibly dumb on Kickstarter's part. Why not just give project managers the ability to turn off comments if spam is getting out of control? Unless I'm missing something, comments are not an integral part of Kickstarter's function.<p>Anyway, if comments were turned off, a potential contributor could just reach out via email or some type of private message if they had a concern about the project.<p>And obviously banning a project and a user for "engaging with a spammer" without any warning is just appalling.<p>"If there is any chance that Rachel will receive spam from a stalker on her project, she should not create one." This statement is just so stupid. Kickstarter should be responsible for dealing with spam if they want to be taken seriously.
I'm wondering what is the possibility that the cyberstalker is a creation of the "TRANSMEDIA ARTIST, BRAND DEVELOPER, AND FUTURIST"? It certainly fits into those categories. Just speculation.
Since HN is about entrepreneurship, I think this article raises good questions, such as, how do you deal when someone makes emotionally-loaded claims against your company in the early hours of a Saturday, including multiple submissions to Reddit using a sockpuppet account?
If this is indeed true, it's outrageous: it's like having my Gmail suspended because someone sent me too much spam.<p>And people can permanently loose their account over this? I guess they've just lost a lot of founders. Permanently.
Although the main character in this drama will never be Miss Congeniality, the systematic and largely undocumented attacks on her character on HN leave a very bad taste in my mouth.<p>This "discussion" feels like a witch hunt.
This is tough.<p>But, I think this is no different than for example Stack Overflow where questions and comments can be edited and removed <i>if they are not on topic</i>, or in this case, where they do not follow the Kickstarter community guidelines.<p>And that is exactly what happened here. Comments from the spammer/stalker are not on topic. Responses to those comments are also not on topic.<p>Rachel had the choice to either actively remove those comments or to participate in those off-topic discussions. She did the latter while in my (no so humble opinion) removing them was really the only appropriate choice.<p>Kickstarter is not a forum for drama, it is a place to raise money for your project. And that should be your one and only goal if you start a project there. This stupid spammer/stalker is taking away valuable time that she could also have put into marketing her project or participating in real discussions.<p>The fact that this is someone who has stalked her for the past 10 years is very sad but it is not relevant in this discussion. She is the admin of the project and she has the powers to keep it on topic.
Regardless of stalking:<p>So basically Kickstarter is saying if there is some other project you don't like on the site you can get it taken off by hiring an offshore site to spam the competitor project.<p>They need a stackoverflow or quora like community system (I haven't used the site but I'm assuming they don't).<p>I will say that was kind of crappy of her to post Daniella's full name. It might not be her fault. It could be the company's policy. If it was a letter from the CEO I could understand. My wife is an executive assistant and she routinely has to write letters that she doesn't necessarily agree with.
Based on my experiences with Kickstarter, this is not surprising.<p>I don't think anyone can argue that they haven't built a great product, but I've yet to be impressed by the quality of their service and find their 'community at all costs' attitude to be immature.<p>Why can't they just IP ban the stalker?<p>Without all of the details, it's hard to know what's going on here, but the lack of empathy in the response from KS is peculiar.
I imagine there are laws that this cyberstalker is breaking, and surely kickstarter can assist in providing the authorities with the relevant information to kickstart an investigation/tro/arrest?
The commenting here is interesting, as is the post. I have some general comments to make about cyberstalking and situations like this - but want to preface it with the disclaimer that <i>I've never heard of Rachel before and cannot sit in any form of judgement on her</i>.<p>However, I was cyberstalked (and then RL stalked & harassed), so I know that it sucks and it can be dangerous. I have no idea what Rachel's stalker has done - but from the context of the blog post it appears they troll her around the net.<p><i>Apparently alerting my backers about this was considered “engaging in conversation with the spammer.”</i><p>This is what sprung out at me from the post, as did her post on the topic [1] From that post:<p><i>(not to mention that thousands of people want him dead)</i><p>And this is probably the crux of the problem. Rising to stalkers is what feeds their ego - they pummel you into submission until you react emotionally and physically to their presence.<p>About the only way to get rid of a cyberstalker is to delete them and ignore them.<p>I'm going to be a bit critical here; she shouldn't have "engaged him" by warning her backers. (edit: it would be nice to know the extent of engagement - often once you do the one "this is a troll" post it is too easy to be dragged into an actual conversation with them). She should have talked to Kickstarter, explained the problem and worked out a solution. She probably should have done that before opening the project - knowing what might happen.<p>It sucks that she'd have to approach the project like that... but in my experience it's better to be pragmatic.<p>Cyberstalkers afflict people they can "get to" emotionally - and although it is, again, unfair, about the only way to resist them is to not let it affect you. This is how I eventually got rid of my cyberstalker (who "cracked" me in the first place by sending pictures of my friends with [digital] blood splattered over the top). Before I managed this, I totally rejected the idea it would work.<p>As to Kickstarter; I feel like they are in a catch 22 here. If they let the project sit and do their best to keep out the troll (which is difficult enough at times) it could flare up on them; Rachel's project could fail and this blog post could be titled "How Kickstarter couldn't keep my cyberstalker away", or it could attract press attention, or it could attract more trolls to Rachel. Plus then there is the human aspect - someone at Kickstarter is sat there seeing these horrid things being posted and thinking "wow, that must be really upsetting".<p>So they delete the project - which could have been handled better, admittedly. But probably the best thing in the long run.<p>1. <a href="http://experimenthaywire.net/is-there-a-solution-to-cyberstalking/" rel="nofollow">http://experimenthaywire.net/is-there-a-solution-to-cybersta...</a><p>EDIT: posting Daniella's full name is rather unfortunate (as she makes a point of using it, it seems).
I wrote to kickstarter this week to alert them of what was either a scam or an over confident 3d modeler. I and others on reddit pointed out a bunch of flaws in the cost of creating the product described at the given goal. It was a minimum of 3X off. Kickstarter wrote back to tell me in so many words that it is the users job to not be taken advantage of, all I could think is "yup you get your 10% no matter what so why care." Truely let down from a company I really liked.
It reminds me of something… Remember the guy who trolled Zed Shaw on GitHub?<p>GitHub added the ability to block users only after Zed wrote a script that crashed GitHub…<p>Rachel should do the same to Kickstarter!
Doesn't matter what the details are:<p>with a rule like this, 4Chan or otherwise could show up and "grief" every project on Kickstarter until they were all canceled
Kickstarter is not the only player in the crowdfunding industry. You could try Rockethub as an alternative, they seem to be more accepting and might be more willing to help you.
One question... whilst the internet has made stalking easier, can't the opposite also be true? It's much easier to shake off a stalker by using a different handle...
I don't think that it is necessarily fair to be extremely critical of Kickstarter. I think that we should consider the viewpoint of the respondent to her, he probably thinks that she in some way caused the stalker to spam her project. I agree 100% that this problem should be fixed - but I don't think that Kickstarter would intentionally ban her account for this situation if they had the full story, and now that it has come to light I hope that apologies are made and this situation is corrected.
Before this gets out of hand: PG, I think it'd great if you added another HN guideline that states that people should wait to hear both sides of an issue before stating their opinion, especially when it comes to these premature PR 'blunders'.<p>Edit: Downvoted? Nice, guys.
Concerned about women being cyber stalked....reveals full name of a woman and where she works in her post.<p>Kickstarter seems pretty out of line, but interested to hear their side of the story.
I am also a victim of this guy. He harassed me off and on for years. He turned on me after I told him "no" when he asked me to do a favor for him I didn't feel comfortable doing. That was all it took to find myself on his shitlist. While we were "friends" I got to listen to him brag about all the horrible things he'd done to people, mostly women he dated, after they decided to tell him "no" or kick him out of their lives once they realized how crazy he is. He would show me how he was getting so-and-so fired from their job by spoofing emails with child pornography in them to the all@ email aliases of their employers from libraries and hacked DNS servers. He showed me how he made money selling pirated ebooks and sheet music on ebay. And he'd brag about using sockpuppets to build up fake credibility because it's all hearsay on the Internet where the credibility of consensus is only second to hard evidence.<p>Don't fall for this guy's sockpuppet spam. This is exactly the kind of thing he was doing on Kickstarter, and has done on Reddit, Hackernews, here, Rachel's various blogs, and yes, all the way back to the days of Livejournal being the amazing mecca of social networking.<p>His name is Jason Christopher Hughes AKA Michael Nath AKA Thylacine AKA antisense is over 40 years old. He's been at this game for a long, long time and has made social engineering an art form.<p>Most of the posts in here that look like layers of confirmation of "facts" about Rachel are all the same person posting through TOR or I2P. If Slashdot admins were to verify the IPs of most of the other posts attacking Rachel, they'll see a wall of TOR and I2P exit nodes, just as any of us who have checked out the logs of his behavior in the past have been able to see. You let this guy brainwash you into believing all his propaganda against Rachel, and you've just weaponized yourself in his favor. Please do not. Keep an open mind. Use your critical thinking skills. Do not allow the emotional shock value of the propaganda to interfere with your thinking. I know it's hard. It's especially hard because Rachel is a very reactionary individual. She has that rockstar vibe to her, and she doesn't take crap from anyone. That makes her an easy target, clearly, because anytime the "moral high ground" seems a little shaky, it's a vulnerability in her defense against her cyberstalker.<p>He's been stalking several of us for years. Most of us don't ever talk about him using our typical logins because he'll shit up the administration and our posts until we get banned. He's phenomenally good at turning people against his victims.<p>Unfortunately it's hard to collect evidence against him. He only attacks maybe 10 or so people at a time. He's never going to become a priority for the FBI or local police because they either have bigger fish to fry or don't understand how to handle him in a way that his behavior can be documented. Making all of this public is a big push for all of us who he's been harassing for over a decade. We're tired of it. We want it to end. We need help.<p>Not your personal army and all that, sure, but it would be nice if we weren't alone in trying to bring this guy down.
You should not feed the troll.<p>You responding to the "stalker" creates an impression that conversation is going on; and the conversation is not pretty. Instead, you should wipe and ban. Preferably done by site admins, not the victim herself.<p>Of course Kickstarter should unban the victim but only after she agrees to never respond to the stalker on Kickstarter. Instead, report. Nobody would blame you if you don't participate in annoying behavior.
Wow, this is beyond ironic on top of ironic on top of ironic.<p>The worst part being the nearly top comment on HN being "don't feed the troll".<p>I'd talk about privilege and the nice ability to "ignore" such "trolls" but I'd be wasting my breath. (which isn't to dismiss the HN community as much as it is to acknowledge that those who get it, get it, and those who don't are probably fortunate enough to not have to)
Flagged.<p>Look, folks, this article's sole relevance to HN is that it involves Kickstarter's banning policies. There's no coding, no real startupy stuff--just a ban on the premier crowdfunding site.<p>Unfortunately, any meaningful discussion of said ban requires we better understand the events leading up to the ban. That in turn requires more information than we are likely to get, and certainly more unbiased information than is available.<p>Without that information, we can't usefully discuss Kickstarter, we can't really discuss how to handle a case like this (as we wouldn't know what the case is like, exactly), and we sure as hell can't learn anything useful.<p>With that information (let us pretend it is even attainable), all we are doing is spelunking internet drama and finding a weird edge case that frankly is most easily solved by a blanket banhammer.<p>I appreciate that Kickstarter may be in the wrong. I also appreciate that the "victim" here apparently has several pseudonyms(annoying) and is arguably a troll/drama queen/lulzcow/whatever.<p>The point is, we don't need to waste any time on this. This is dumb internet shit--boot it out.
Reductio ad absurdum much?<p>Was she banned for being a stalking victim? Absolutely not. You cannot reach that conclusion from the evidence given, and, furthermore, she was told, and told us, very clearly why she was banned. It didn't say for being a stalking victim. Stop being so dramatic. There's a war on.
Rachel Marone's stalker (and mine) makes a personal appearance in the comments section of this article: <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/business/kickstarter-cyberstalker-victim-rachel-marone/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dailydot.com/business/kickstarter-cyberstalker-vi...</a>