This is directly due to the (in my opinion unethical) actions of established companies (like Pebble) treating it like a trendy preorder store. Kickstarter themselves have been clear on this since launch.
- the infamous "Buy my child a laptop and send her to a coding camp" campaign (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434721)
There's the TOS violations: "fund my life" - buying her daughter a laptop (camp provides IT resources" "fund tuition" - educational camp, pretty self-explanatory And then the rest of the tastelessness - I'm fairly certain a nine year old isn't at all involved in beer cozies saying "I drink like a girl, keep up!" etc.
- The Bike Index (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1073266317/the-bike-inde...)
1. It's a violation of "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund e-commerce, business, and social networking websites or apps." 2. This is a website, right? Then why: "Travel to the eleven biggest bike cities in the United States to meet with shop owners and give them the ability to register bikes for free (the cities: NYC, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Madison, Tucson, Austin, Denver, D.C., and Minneapolis)." (Awesome, let's use Kickstarter to pay for me/us to take a trip through the US "to meet with bike shop owners and give them a chance to use the website"...) 3. "Offer region specific recommendations for reporting bike theft to the police." - so an extended goal of this site is to "recommend how to report to the police, customized for regions"?!? 4. Some stickers. 5. Oh, and you have to pay to register with the Index.
So yeah, let's not place too much stock in Kickstarter's "what we say, what we do, two different things, ignore that as we take our cut".