Comment Re:Are people still going to buy this thing? (Score 1) 76
It'll be interesting to see how the general public's trust pans out over this thing. Do they take Kickstarter's cancellation as a red flag or are they so desperate for a easily-configurable Tor router that they'll pay whoever they can for it. Even if that means trusting these assholes vs. their ISPs.
Neither - their interest was enough to get them click on the button on the Kickstarter they were linked to, but their interest is not enough to get them to go to some other site, fill out payment info, and hope for the best.
Kickstarter works because:
There's a single site with tons of people on it who would otherwise never visit yourrandomproject.com or thatotherproject.org .
It's a single click to pledge your cash for a specific reward.
Backers know that they have the option to cancel their pledge at the 11th hour. This safety encourage people to pledge when they're only slightly interested, and limited rewards encourages them to do it early, generating hype.
There's a reason the vast majority of Kickstarters are extremely front-loaded - people don't want to be left out of the next big thing. I would see more value in the Kickstarter model, and trust it more, if projects were posted before funding opened. This would allow for comments, questions, and updates before the bandwagon gets rolling. Then a limited funding period (7-10 days?) would commence where people could fund the thing. Right now everything is driven by hype and impulse. This is, of course, what project creators and Kickstarter itself want, so it's not going to change.