I've said it before and I say it again....
Companies like Kickstarter and IndieGogo may be inadvertantly funneling money to fraudsters or criminals.... or worse... terrorism. I understand they take a 3rd party "we are not accountable" status and all backers must be aware that if things go sour, they are out of luck with any help whatsoever. I get it.
However...Me thinks the U.S. GOVERNMENT would take a very keen interest in following the flow of money, especially to regions of the world that fund terrorism or there is organized crime involved.
If IndieGogo can be shown to indirectly be permitting the funding of terrorists, I think they would get slapped so hard they will never recover.
I'm not trying to point any blame to the Triton guys, who claim they are in Sweden. Nevermind that some users seem to think they are in Dubai. And I certainly don't want to accuse people to supporting or tied to any such thing just because of where they live or what ethnicity or religion they are.
But...Shouldn't these companies (IndieGogo) be required to show where their money is going? They pay taxes, right? They must show money flowing out of the U.S. to foreign accounts, and lots of it. Many of these foreign accounts, owned by individuals with unknown motivations and possibly anonymous bank accounts.
Also.... Let's not forget that tax evasion is a criminal activity, and that some of these people being funded are not putting into place proper accounting practices, any kind of disclosure, and all other regular business practices that are required.
While I love the idea of crowd-funding, we will come to remember in a few years that this was just another example of greed and lack of accountability (with no proper systems in place to prevent major issues)... Much like the mortgage crisis/bubble, the derivatives bubble, and all other financial instrument bubbles and scams that have plagued our financial world.
Crowd-funding is awesome, but it needs to have certain checks and balances and safe-guards in place.[edit:] Companies fail and things don't always work out financially. But they claim BANKRUPTCY and the people who lost the money cannot borrow again for a long time. They have their assets liquidated, their house or collateral taken away, they are punished and held accountable. That somehow makes people less "loose" with money and a bit more likely to be responsible. That also means you don't sleep at night, you sweat buckets, you yell at people for not doing their job, etc.... that's what you do when you risk losing the shirt off your back and ending up screwed over.
I do seem to remember a few failed campaigns where the inventors became very depressed and even risked committing suicide.... So I know there are genuine honest people out there who crowd-fund and really feel obligated and responsible. But how many don't? At least if an institution lends you money, you should have a team of specialists who evaluate the project and help solve problems.... much like "incubators" who provide assistance in making sure the projects develop to fruition or at least evaluate projects before they start to ensure that it is even feasible.
It seems to me that as far as problems go, crowd-funding abuse is not really a major issue in the eyes of the government. However, if there is terrorism-related funding going on, a whole new set of priorities are given to this. I don't like necessarily the "terrorism" excuse either to allow government to do whatever they want either, but then again... who knows how many millions of dollars have ended up in the hands of organized cyber-crime rings, terrorists and others.
DO YOU THINK INDIEGOGO KNOWS WHO IS A TERRORIST OR CYBER-SCAMMER?Anybody half way across the world can make some bull-$h!t device, claim it works, get lucky and raise a pile of money... and then uses it to fund a war. How does IndieGogo know? All you need is some good photoshop and 3D rendering skills... Make a new smartwatch, make a hoverboard, make a cool looking cellphone, make a projector tablet/watch/camera, make a VR headset, 3D display, solar charger, and numerous other "cool" gadgets and pay to get them promoted, and raise a ton of money. Seems nobody is fact-checking or science-checking or even tracking where the money goes.... Except it could end up causing death, destruction and mayhem.