My experience with Kickstarter as a backer

5 min readApr 25, 2019

Kickstarter is a popular crowdfunding platform, an American public-benefit corporation whose mission is to “bring creative projects to life”. Founded a decade ago in 2009, it has funded more than 257,000 projects, but I never backed any of them — until now.

The Project

Of all the projects to back, what to choose? Plenty of promising projects, but none really caught my eye until I saw Frankie’s Free-Range Meat:

I was following the creator of this project, Frank Tufano, on YouTube and enjoyed his videos, so I jumped at the chance to back his project.

What pledge to choose? There were a range of options, up to an excessive $5000, but I wasn’t that crazy so I went for a smaller pledge. Eager to try the prepared products, I pledged $85 for the Tasty Pemmican and Jerky pack:

Satisfied I could become a part of a worthwhile crowdfunding project, I kicked back and waited for the deadline and delivery date to be reached. Kickstarter thanked me, and confirmed the requirements for my April 9th pledge:

The next day, several other funding tiers were added, and the project seemed to be going well. Apparently a lot of people were also interested, and as the project picked up steam it reached nearly $33,000 in funding.

I didn’t think much of it, patiently waiting for the project deadline to arrive. Until…

The Suspension

Early in the morning hours of April 16th, I received this email:

Frankie's Free-Range Meat (Suspended) has been suspended by Kickstarter… What’s going on?!

In the dark, I couldn’t find much information beyond this form letter. So I turned to Kickstarter’s support site.

Suspending is not Suspending

The terminology “suspend” implies it is possible to “resume”, that is, the suspension is temporary until a problem can be addressed. Just like ^Z and fg or SIGSTOP and SIGCONT in Unix, that’s what I was thinking.

However, according to Kickstarter’s support site:

Kickstarter Support > Creator questions > Troubleshooting

Suspensions are permanent!

This raises more questions than it answers:

Why use this misleading word “suspend”, giving false hope the project can resume at some point? Am I merely ignorant of an alternative definition of this word? The dictionary doesn’t seem to agree with Kickstarter’s use of suspend:

I suggest using a more accurate verb, such as excommunicate.

And why was Kickstarter’s answer updated 13 days ago? But that’s not the only problem.

No details shared of rule violations

So why was the project I backed banned? I tried to find answers:

but no specific details on the alleged violation are provided, only vague generalities. No surprise only 3 out of 10 found this helpful.

If a project violated the rules, why was it accepted in the first place? What caused this project to create a false hope for 8 days worth of backers?

Details emerge, what the creator said

At this point, no one knew what was going on so backers were commenting on the YouTube channel asking what happened. A day later, he posted VEGANS Tried to SABOTAGE my Meat Company:

Maybe the creator is biased, but he posted email exchanges with Kickstarter and their actions do not seem reasonable to me, but make up your own mind.

However, please be advised that we have determined that Frankie’s Free-Range Meat is *not* within the scope of our platform.
We appreciate your understanding,
Kickstarter Trust & Safety

How was ButcherBox: Open your door to healthy, 100% grass-fed beef, successfully funded in 2015, but a new similar project was kicked off Kickstarter in 2019? Was their a policy change? Why wasn’t Kickstarter willing to work with the creator to ensure the project is compliant, and instead enacts a blanket ban on his company?

A Pattern of Censorship

Further research shows this is not the first time Kickstarter has unfairly canceled a project. Although Kickstarter has had a respectable amount of notable successful projects, it is no stranger to controversies. The very first controversy listed on Wikipedia:

Filmmaker Accuses Kickstarter of Censoring ‘Gosnell’ Abortion Movie

Coincidentally, I had recently finished watching the movie in question, Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. It was a good movie, I would recommend it, although a controversial subject it wasn’t as graphic as the related 2019 film Unplanned. An important story I am glad it was told.

Although Gosnell was successfully released to theaters in 10/12/2018, Kickstarter took action against this project on 5/1/2014.

So what did the creators do? Undeterred, they went to a competitor:

Wow, more than 2 million euros. A successful project if there is one, thanks to Indiegogo, despite Kickstarter’s arbitrary “suspension” from their platform.

Personal Observations

Needless to say, having the first project I backed abruptly and capriciously suspended, combined with research into their past behavior, my opinion of Kickstarter is negative.

Of course, as a private company Kickstarter is free to ban whoever they please from their platform. Conversely, I am free to no longer use Kickstarter, and instead patronize their competitors. Due to this poor experience, I can confidently say the next crowdfunded project I back won’t be on Kickstarter.

What follows is a personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but it appears to me there is a growing disparity between somewhat “authoritarian” tech companies who intend to protect you from yourself with Trust & Safety teams, and more laissez-faire yet underdog competitors attempting to take their place. To wit:

What other alternatives to de-platforming sites do you recommend? Should Kickstarter ban meat companies and anti-abortion films? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.