Indiegogo fund raises enough money to buy video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack | Hacker News Reader

Indiegogo fund raises enough money to buy video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack

indiegogo.com

149 pointsmuratmutlu95 comments

Some context: Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto, the most populous city in Canada. This is the newest of numerous controversies during his time in office.

Edit: it's also worth noting that Mayor Ford's relationship with the media has been... colorful. Some funny cases include him calling 80% of journalists "maggots" (1) and lying about a drunken outburst back in 2006 (2).

(1) http://read.thestar.com/#!/article/51a27b477b1eacc589c3f4ae-...

(2) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2006/05/03/tor-f...

Thanks, I added a bit of context

The fact that this is getting such widespread attention is making Toronto look like a farce, and as someone from there, it really upsets me. Now when I tell people I'm from Toronto, it will be, "Oh, that's the city with the crack smoking mayor right?"

Really unfortunate and despicable. Cannot believe we voted this idiot into office.

To be fair, this: "Oh, that's the city with the crack smoking mayor right?" Could also refer to Washington DC.

Washington DC would be "Oh, that's the city with the crack smoking mayor who was reelected, right?"

Welcome to the club! I come from the country that voted one Silvio Berlusconi to head the government. Multiple times. For 20 years.

I find that it makes Toronto more interesting. A mayor smoking crack? It doesn't get better than that, and it was about time someone turned it up a notch--having multiple mistresses is for the rookies. This guy knows how to party and I would expect him to be reelected :D.

Plus from what I can tell he wasn't busting crackheads left and right while doing the drug himself. That gets more respect than uh, let's say a guy busting prostitution rings while banging prostitutes himself lol.

More than that, his brother (Doug Ford - also a counselor) is being accused of being a high level hashish dealer in the 80s. 2 of his staffers have now quit, and one was fired for apparently telling him to go to rehab. He's been told that he's no longer wanted as a volunteer high school football coach. Also has been kicked out of a hockey game for being too intoxicated and was arrested for dui & possession of marijuana in florida before he became mayor. It's a circus.

Also he was almost kicked out of office at Christmas time this year for voting on something in which he had a vested interest.

A Canadian kicked out of a hockey game for being too drunk? That's something else right there

I think it was more the fact that he was being violent without being a player.

Here's an interesting overview of Rob Ford's shenanigans in 2012:

http://torontoist.com/2012/12/2012-villain-rob-ford/

Obviously a lot of you guys don't like Mr. Ford and he doesn't sound like a decent person, but why is this on HN? I fail to see how this relates to tech or entrepreneurship.

It's an interesting, if potentially worrying, development in crowd sourcing - I think that makes it tangentially related.

HN frontpage sometimes strays rather far off-topic on weekends (today is a holiday in the US).

This is, to my knowledge, the first time a crowdfunding platform has been used as a way to raise money in an attempt to buy a video of alleged misconduct by a politician from a drug cartel.

True true. But, while we're at it, can we stop posting articles about how higher education sucks, and how veiled libertarian ideals rule? Politics belong somewhere else, or, there's simply no membrane careful enough to prevent this.

Shows how tech is shaping the world around us? I don't think anyone has ever crowdsourced a black mail video before, have they?

I'm from Toronto and have been following this story closely. But even I am surprised to see this at the top of HN... You know, it only take a small amount of votes in a short period to get to the top...

I posted it because of the implications for crowdfunding. I've never seen anything like this before and it's extremely interesting to me and I work in the tech industry.

Despite what others may say, on balance, there really isn't a good reason for this to be on top of HN.

Also, it's important to recognize that the fundraisers have lost contact with those in custody of the video. It's likely that we may never see that video and, rather than contributing to original intent of the fundraiser, the donations will instead go to fund Gawker's arbitrarily chosen charity. Crowdfunding's double-edged sword strikes again.

Don't know if anyone knows, but is Gawker allowed to use the donations as a tax write off? Always been curious about that.

Forbes had an interesting article about some of the tax implications of crowdfunding - http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/05/23/ki...

As far as using the donations as a tax write off, I don't think I understand your question. Are you asking if Gawker could take the money they received from crowdfunding, turn around and donate it to a registered charity and then claim a deduction??

The plan is to donate the money if they can't buy the video(and it looks likely they won't be able to buy the video) so yes that's what I was asking.

Only if they took the money as income and, possibly, paid taxes on it. I presume they would be very careful to never take custody of the money, even in trust.

We have vote/flag links for a reason.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it's here because a large majority of HN users voted it here... because they found it to be of interest... Just guessing...

That's not all that HN is. If that's what you want, then hit up https://lobste.rs/ it's got the same articles as HN, but without the cruft.

This political story is at the top of HN despite the guidelines for the same reason that your remarks are at the top of the comments... despite the guidelines urging us not to comment on why something doesn't belong on HN.

Not all the guidelines make sense in all situations.

They are "guide"lines.

If someone doesn't believe this story belongs on HN and politely gives valid reasons, I see no problem.

I think we are agreeing with each other.

I'm a Torontonian, and definitely not a fan of Rob Ford, but somehow it feels like there is an ongoing, organized effort to get him out of the office and out of politics (whether by the opposing parties, or some other organization). Sometimes he really doesn't help the issue by somehow managing to charge head first into even more trouble, but the string of various things he's been charged/accused of can't be coincidental.

Now there's a video of him smoking crack (which it looks like nobody will see, but trust us - it's there!), then there are some anonymous drug dealers who swear that Rob's brother Doug was a major drug-lord back in the day (which for some reason, just surfaces now).

I don't know... it's all a bit convenient and yet ethereal.

He fired his chief of staff last week for telling him to go to rehab. This is according to the Sun which, as newspapers go, has been his cheerleader for the past ten years.

So you can't claim there's no substance to the drug allegations when his highest ranking staff-member is advising him to get help.

Is this the article? http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/23/rob-ford-told-to-go-to-...

Here's how that accusation starts: "But a source familiar with the situation told the Sun...". So again, no names, no factual evidence, nothing concrete. Just for the record I'm not saying that Rob Ford didn't smoke crack or that his brother wasn't some kind of drug lord... in fact it wouldn't surprise me at all. I'm just commenting on how relentlessly someone seems to be trying to ruin their political careers.

As far as the Sun being Ford's cheerleader, yes it's true they are the token "conservative" media outlet. Just as Fox News is the conservative source in the US. But here's what I believe about their role in the media landscape. As the most prominent conservative media, their job is to be so ludicrous and untrustworthy that only the most hard-core conservatives would actually listen to them. The John Stewart show is quite good at highlighting just how ridiculous Fox News is, for example. This way you are left with other more-or-less liberal mainstream media as the most accessible and most credible source of news. This way you can channel all kinds of propaganda along with the other "trustworthy" news. And that's how wars and surveillance-drones are sold to tax-payers. Sorry for the conspiracy theory rant.

You say "someone" but the people who are writing these articles are easily identified and researched.

The two journalists who did the Globe and Mail piece are award-winning well respected investigative journalists.

I doubt they would risk their careers, or waste their time, on someone else's false claims.

No I agree... Let's say these are absolutely responsible journalists with solid sources and reliable evidence. What's really strange and somewhat worrying is, why is this torrent of information suddenly coming out now. Both Rob and Doug Ford have been in politics for years.

What if whoever has these anonymous drug dealers in their pocket has decided for one reason or another to unleash them on the media and ruin the Fords' reputations.

The possibility that our politics and public opinion is not controlled by democracy, but rather some private (and possibly criminal) interests worries me far more than whether Rob Ford indeed smoked crack or not.

That's a fair question for sure.. In my opinion, the Ford brothers have been escalating things with the media (who are more than happy to reciprocate) for a while, and things just came to a head with this crack video thing, and everyone decided "let's do this" and the gloves came off..

Oh, and I think they've been doing a fine job of ruining their own reputations (I'm half-joking about that one but Rob Ford really does have almost-weekly blunders)..

You're downvoted but you're spot on. People just don't want to accept that what THEY trust is as wrong as Fox et al

Actually the story has come out that he fired Towhey in relation to his refusal to go reclaim football gear that the mayor had donated to the school that fired him, and then subsequently told the mayor "We have more important things to deal with" when the mayor decided he wanted his chief of staff to organized a BBQ for said football team.

Yup. Our mayor has been using city staff and resources for his football coaching pass-time.. That's nothing new though..

It's quite unnerving that you're concluding things based on hearsay and innuendo. If you have actual evidence of that, please bring it.

This might be a case where there actually should be an organized, ongoing campaign to get this man out of politics. Clearly this is not a man who should be in a leadership position.

Why? Because you don't agree with his conservative positions? The democracy voted for him. Is that not good enough for a "leadership position"?

If the "organized, ongoing campaign to get this man out of politics" is done using media, avoids slander, and the guy gets a reasonable amount of chances to speak back, then I would say the situation is perfectly democratic.

I was thinking more about the smoking crack part and less about his conservatism.

So you have the video! Why don't you turn it in, didn't you hear you've just made $200K?

Hey, you hire a guy, he seems like he's going to perform, but then he fucks up repeatedly. Trying to get him out based on his track record is not the same thing as trying to overcome the democratic election. We're just trying to fire him for cause.

If you like his conservative position, you are probably extremely unhappy with how his behaviour constantly undermines his own agenda. You are probably extremely unimpressed by how little he has actually accomplished. You probably want someone with the exact same agenda but without the baggage and obstreperous behaviour to push it through.

Like Doug Holyday:

http://www.toronto.ca/councillors/holyday1.htm

Should being voted into office give you a free pass on everything? "Democracy has spoken", shouldn't mean that democracy stays quiet for the next X years until the next election... though this often happen, to be fair.

"... Sometimes he really doesn't help the issue by somehow managing to charge head first into even more trouble..." or a camera! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj8haZzvaE8)

It is not an understatement to say he is easily the worst mayor the city has ever seen, and further, that he's embroiled in a number of scandals, any one of which could take him down.

He's made a lot of enemies, especially within the press. Although he was treated fairly at first, given the benefit of the doubt, any free passes he's had have long since been used up. Every little thing he does from this point forward is going to be questioned and scrutinized endlessly.

Remember he just spent the last half year stumping for a casino nobody wanted based on expectations that were sky-high. The amount of money he thought was fair was orders of magnitude more than usually given to a casino. This comes after the effort to derail a transit plan with $1.3B in funding, and a decade-long effort to rehabilitate the port-lands.

He deserves every single bit of negative publicity he gets.

He's possibly the worst politician Toronto's ever had as mayor - I'll give you that. Constantly reeling from one self-induced disaster to another.

But why do you think Torontonians elected him, a man who seems to have very little in common with them, apart from a love for the Leafs? Might I suggest it had a lot to do with the actual management skills and records of the previous mayors?

When all you can vote for is people like Ford, people who don't have a recognizable platform, or people with a reputation for reckless spending and massive cost-overruns, you end up with Ford coming out on top.

The previous mayor, Miller, while not universally adored, would have had little problem getting re-elected. There wasn't much in the way of serious opposition. Why he didn't run is a matter of speculation.

Rob Ford is a travesty (though as the mayor of a city that also elected in Mel Lastman, he really isn't that much of an outlier), but saying that he was "treated fairly at first" is a laugh.

The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, has vilified him from day one. Perhaps they have been vindicated, but the utter trivia that they lambasted the man for daily -- stories that crowded out things like murders on the front page -- bordered on the ridiculous.

As to the casino, Ford thought the province would kick over $100 million. The province said more like $55 million. How does that equal "orders of magnitude"?

As much as The Star has been critical of Ford, other papers would at least give him the benefit of the doubt. If he said he was working on something, or that something was a done deal, that's what they reported.

I'd read that the math worked out to $10M a year, not $100M as requested, and that $55M would be under extremely optimistic circumstances.

Ugh...

> UPDATE-- MAY 27, 2013, 9:46 AM EASTERN EDT: We have had no further contact with the people we believe to have custody of this video since the last update.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Our confidence that we can consummate this transaction has diminished.

The fallback position of giving the money to addiction and mental health charities was arguably a better outcome than giving the money to dealers.

And one of the reporters who saw the video was on the radio this morning saying that three other copies are floating around.

So it's a win-win-win.. the supposed drug-dealers are 200k short, the people who originally donated money to defame and ruin a man's political career now feel noble and charitable again because it turns our they donated to a good cause after all, and Rob Ford's political career is ruined forever. Couldn't have asked for a more wonderfully humanitarian outcome.

It seems likely to me that other members in their gang or community must have taken care of these guys by now. Who would buy drugs from anyone associated with these guys after such a major leak of personal information? The "Somali" brand has undoubtedly taken a huge hit now that its clear that, like so many young operations experiencing growth, they didnt take security seriously enough from the start.

The guys at the top must be in full damage-control mode, because they're going to lose a magnitude more revenue than a measly $200k. I don't know who their competition is, but there's a big opening for a mid-sized crack dealer to rapidly expand their marketshare if they can convince their customers that they take the security of their personal information seriously.

As for the guys with the video, think what happened to David Barksdale

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

...but cross it with what happened to D'Angelo Barksdale.

It's so ironic and weird that Gawker was involved in poisoning David Barksdale's employment opportunities, and is also involved in the Rob Ford case, while still living under the shadow of the millions of passwords they leaked last year.

One person in the photo was gunned down in a "targeted" murder [1].

[1] http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/27/homicide-detectives-...

Perhaps the drug dealers got smart, "hey, if we hand over the video showing Ford smoking the crack we sold him, doesn't that prove we are drug dealers? damn mo-fo, we outta here!"

Well I had actually wondered as well about the simple logistics of accepting a $200k payment.

Clearly Gawker would need some kind of paper trail before making that payment, not just for tax purposes but simply because I'm pretty sure there are laws that govern transfers that large..

So the recipient would have to declare that income at tax time (and possibly even file paperwork on receipt) to at the very least pay taxes on it, which would put them on the government's radar, which is something they may want less than they would want $200k..

It's still legal to use cash to pay for things. Let's not assume that we've lost that ability until it happens. It's an important privacy we shouldn't give up easily.

I'm not sure that a US business can take out $200k from the bank, bring it across the border into Canada undeclared, and give it to a random person without any kind of paperwork or tracking..

Maybe I'm wrong! I'd just be pretty surprised about it..

You're right about the border crossing. I didn't consider that. Canada wants documentation after $10K.

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/pub/bsf5052-eng.html

Well actually one of them, possibly the owner of the video, was killed [1], the others have probably gone into hiding.

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-police-s...

This somewhat off topic, but I just got back from Toronto last week. Great city. It has been 20 years since I've been up there and a lot has changed.

There are concerns about the development that is going on, but seeing new urban housing going up is refreshing compared with many US cities which effectively have no growth policies.

Based on the number of units that seemed ready to hit the market, I suspect Toronto could see significantly lower housing prices in the future. I just hope it doesn't end in financial ruin for the banks.

On the other hand about 60,000 immigrants move to Toronto every year, so there's plenty of people who want housing.

I think it good that developers in the city are able to meet the demand rather than ignore it. I'd like to see this level of development happening in US cities. It looks like progress.

As a Torontonian, this is just embarrassing. Someone get this guy out of office already..

You know, I had been previously thinking about crowdfunding competitors to Kickstarter. Like Google, that company has pretty much cornered the market in mindshare to the point that kickstarting is synonymous with crowdfunding. Good on Indiegogo, the West Coast/Silicon Valley alternative, for establishing itself with this, I guess.

IndieGoGo has nothing to do with this, aside from it being on their site. It's a poorly written headline. If anything it should say 'Gawker fund raises enough money...'

But yes, i'm very happy to see others succeeding at crowdfunding outside of KickStarter, and I firmly believe those with large followings don't even need to be using an outside source, but could be doing it on their own websites.

More like cornered it like Apple, since there is an approval process for all projects.

IGG is an open barn door by comparison, which is what drives a lot of project creators there.

This isn't exactly great attention for Indiegogo. With the most recent update that "Our confidence that we can consummate this transaction has diminished." this only serves to make the Kickstarter model of filtering submissions look even better.

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that if the [Insert Kickstarter project here] doesn't materialize there are few things holding the founder/creator accountable?

In this case, if they don't obtain the video they are simply going to donate $200k to a charity that they will "figure out what that is later if it comes to it."

Weren't they originally claiming that his drug dealers shot the video? If so, isn't it actually more harmful to society to give a bunch of crack dealers $200,000 than it is for the mayor of Toronto to smoke crack?

Compare who has more influence and therefore potential for harming the public - two dealers with $200k or a crackhead mayor of a city with 2.6M inhabitants.

Interestingly, another candidate (George Smitherman) who ran against Ford for the 2010 municipal election in Toronto admitted to being addicted to "an illegal drug" before running for political office.

I wasn't living in Toronto when the election was going on so I didn't really pay attention to the media re: the election, but I wonder how they portrayed him at the time

This is definitely interesting. It makes me wonder if there is a possibility to crowd-fund more "information retrieval" like this.

I have no idea who Mayor Rob Ford is, but I assume he must be to the right of center for this to be the top item on HN.

If only there was a way for you to look this up...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Rob+Ford

It's more of a comment about the predictability of political articles on HN.

And the predictability of the outright hypocrisy so many right -wing politicians find themselves caught in...

But who else to tell us about the horrors is drug addiction than someone who's been there? </sarcasm>

Although Toronto local politics is supposed to be non-partisan, he is indeed a right-wing politician.

Seems like a bait-and-switch. Horrible.

They will donate any surplus money to a charity relevant to dealing with drug addiction.

And, there's a good chance that the video will not surface because Rob Ford (or, you know, the way mob bosses wink) ordered the murder of the video owner: http://gawker.com/ford-staffer-tells-police-about-tip-linkin...

[Edit: uhm, tongue in cheek, obviously. But Rob Ford is pretty clearly messed up with some dodgy people doing dodgy things.]

Crazy, I've never thought about crowdfunding in this way before, feels like some sort of interactive scandal

You're already convicting him for murder based on contradicted conjecture?

That the "CP24" (<-- not real journalists) released information attempting to nullify the claims isn't quite "contradicted conjecture". And really, humour anyone?

At the risk of my karma, they don't do humour here. No sense of humour what so ever from what I can work out. Lost more karma due to humour than anything else here. Fair enough and all that, not ever where has to go with humour, but be warned.

Of course I guess I'll now be told that is my fault, my humour doesn't work, how dare I suggest a lack of humour, and get down slapped, but there you go. Of course, I will then have to say that proved my point, as some sort of reply, that will also get down voted. And so on...

So, there is is in one post, figured it would be more efficient!!!!

Now, can the humourless work out any of that is supposed to be funny?

HN digs insightful, intelligent, or insightful humor. We're not so hot on flippancy, hyperbole, and unnecessary sarcasm.

You really shouldn't be indignant to be told "your humor doesn't work"-- if you get told that, it's because it's true. Playing to your audience is the foundation of effective comedy.

Do you realize you can actually face legal consequences for so flippantly making such a claim?

Really? He's going to send the entire Internet to court on libel charges? Last week his defender's came out saying that the video was fake or didn't exist. This week, the Globe and Mail produced an article that was the result of two year's of investigation that shows just how deep the Ford family is in the drug business. Whether these allegations are true or not, at this point would it be beyond the realm of possibility?

You aren't the entire Internet. And yes, random people saying random things (through the bravery of seeming anonymity) have led to a number of well known libel cases.

I think you and I have different definitions of "good chance". There's almost no chance of that. Its more likely that the current crack-dealing owner of the video killed the previous crack-dealing owner of the video. I don't think Rob Ford had any hand in his death.

I think Rob Ford is the classic lovable buffoon stereotype, always getting himself into trouble, and not some highly-connected mob boss like you portray him. He just happens to be addicted to KFC, football and crack.

Allegedly.

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