I don't see it as brilliant, I see it as a giant foot-in-mouth situation (which may be colored by the fact that I don't have a problem with seduction guides in general, and haven't seen the material in question) - until now Kickstarter has been neutral on legal content so if I see something I don't like, well too bad, but now there is a precedent for removing something because somebody finds it offensive, but others like it; so now they either have to issue an apology and retract the next offensive thing (say a t-shirt commemorating the ban on assault weapons) or lose their stance as neutral.
If they had instead issued a non-apology-apology they would have been of the hock.
Agreed. The more dangerous precedent is that they are willing to cave to a vocal group who may or may not be right. Without defending the material, because I frankly can't, I am troubled to see Kickstarter imposing its own value judgements on projects, and even worse than that, now subject themselves to the value judgements of whichever populace can prove to be the most vocal.
> The thing that the commenters on social media are leaving out is that the advice was taken from a section in the guide offering advice on what to do AFTER a man has met a cute girl, gotten her phone number, gone on dates, spent time getting to know her, and now are alone behind closed doors fooling around. If "Don't wait for signs, make the first move" promotes sexual assault, then "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid was a song about rape.
Private company. They are free to cave in to demands from a vocal minority if they so choose. They are free to ban anything remotely non-religious or atheistic, if they so choose.
If you feel so strongl about it, start your own company that will publish and market products in line with your values, get together with like-minded people to start an advocacy group and most importantly, vote with your dollars and encourage others to do the same.
It is easy to cry Free Speech, but hard to take actions to defend and strengthen it.
I'm a pretty staunch civil rights advocate, so I acknowledge that it is hard, but that shouldn't stop me ignoring that Kickstarter's value judgement here has, at least in my opinion, erred on the side of draconian.
As someone who occasionally consults for other political groups and startups, I don't necessarily need to start up a new project to spread my message, IndieGogo already serves the more avant garde fairly well -- but my course of action will be to stop advocating the use of Kickstarter and instead start recommending IndieGogo and its ilk.
For the record, I am not trying to assert that Kickstarter did not have the right to do what they did. Obviously it's their site, their servers, etc., etc.; I just really wish they hadn't chosen this course of action because I feel that they went the wrong way, and I will act accordingly.
But again, even more sad than that is that there are 50,000 young people (at least according to @dosomething) that were so eager to see a project censored.
Nobody is denying Kickstarters rights and I would be the first to defend them if anybody ended up suing them over this, but actions have consequences, even for companies. If they don't cave in to the next offensive project (t-shirt with "I have a gun because I have a small dick") then they will stop being percieved as neutral and will hurt their business with some groups. As a company, they are trying to make as much money as they can, so they should consider the consequences of turning away people, even if they unquestionately have the right to do so.
> Private company. They are free to cave in to demands from a vocal minority if they so choose.
And individuals are free to criticize them for their decision. If they indeed caved to the demands of a vocal subgroup of people, then it is only logical for people that didn't like this decision to voice their own opinions, perhaps inspiring another vocal subgroup: fighting fire with fire.
They already curate projects for a lot less than this, as does nearly every store. YouTube doesn't host every video, HN doesn't post every link, B&N doesn't sell every book -- it's actually hard to think of counterexamples where they don't draw a line far before legality or some other obvious choice.
Not to say there aren't places that wouldn't carry this book -- but, nearly every store controls their inventory.
And again, all perfectly within their rights to do.
Barnes and Noble not selling every book though has less to do with the content of any particular book and more to do with its overall sales figures, I imagine. Not stocking the Kama Sutra because it's offensive is a problem (which is probably best suited to Davis Kidd booksellers); not stocking the Kama Sutra because it doesn't sell is a business decision.
I have no idea how YouTube manages their videos, so I can't comment on that.
HN is community moderated, and that's a feature, not a bug.
All of the above though are different entirely from a project being approved, fully funded, then removed after the fact as a response to a vocal opposition group.
This isn't a legal issue. You can write all you want promoting rape culture. Kickstarter, as a private company, is well within their rights and Terms of Service to pull your project if they find it in bad taste. And they should most definitely be commended for deciding that rape-culture-promotion is inappropriate.
Did I say it was a legal issue? No, it is a PR issue, or rather, it can become a PR issue. It may be my right to tell my neighbor he is an idiot and that I hate him, but that doesn't mean it is very smart or likely to make me popular.
> until now Kickstarter has been neutral on legal content
No it hasn't. They've had clear policies about certain types of content. They even say in this blog that if they'd seen the Reddit material when the KickStarter had been created they would not have allowed it.
If they had instead issued a non-apology-apology they would have been of the hock.