Hey HN, since my comment below the article was buried beneath a bunch of ads, and a discussion is developing, here is the original comment I made on salon.com after reading the article:
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(Co-founder/CEO of Crowdtilt here) I just wanted to follow up on the article above and clarify a few things. My replies in the article seem to come across as dismissive of the potential downsides to civic crowdfunding. That couldn't be further from the truth - As team members here at Crowdtilt would tell you, I have actually been quite introspective about how our tools are being used within the realm of community fundraising in the last few days (and as this use case for private security has begun to spread to other cities).
Our tools and platform are built with democratization in mind, not built to further tech elitism or affluent disparity. Like any tool built to connect people (from ships, to the automobile, to the internet itself) the early adoption may be through a more affluent class, but that is not where the impact stays and remains - and its introduction is an undeniable net positive for society. Additionally, knowing that many (more affluent) neighborhoods have been doing things like this for years with homeowners associations to hire private security, we hope this tool continues to lower the barriers for such solutions to problems as dire as security or as aspirational as something like free public wifi for a city (http://tilt.tc/TP07) that we've seen on the other end of the spectrum of civic crowdfunding.
My view is that communities will benefit from the tools we're building, but again, I want it to be clear that we take the potential downsides of civic crowdfunding seriously and think about ways to mitigate those downsides - we/I am not dismissive of these arguments whatsoever.
Please feel free to reach me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions or thoughts - would be happy to have a dialogue on the topic with anyone (...I would learn more from that than a one-sided internal monologue with myself or our team). Thanks, James.
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(Co-founder/CEO of Crowdtilt here) I just wanted to follow up on the article above and clarify a few things. My replies in the article seem to come across as dismissive of the potential downsides to civic crowdfunding. That couldn't be further from the truth - As team members here at Crowdtilt would tell you, I have actually been quite introspective about how our tools are being used within the realm of community fundraising in the last few days (and as this use case for private security has begun to spread to other cities).
Our tools and platform are built with democratization in mind, not built to further tech elitism or affluent disparity. Like any tool built to connect people (from ships, to the automobile, to the internet itself) the early adoption may be through a more affluent class, but that is not where the impact stays and remains - and its introduction is an undeniable net positive for society. Additionally, knowing that many (more affluent) neighborhoods have been doing things like this for years with homeowners associations to hire private security, we hope this tool continues to lower the barriers for such solutions to problems as dire as security or as aspirational as something like free public wifi for a city (http://tilt.tc/TP07) that we've seen on the other end of the spectrum of civic crowdfunding.
My view is that communities will benefit from the tools we're building, but again, I want it to be clear that we take the potential downsides of civic crowdfunding seriously and think about ways to mitigate those downsides - we/I am not dismissive of these arguments whatsoever.
Please feel free to reach me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions or thoughts - would be happy to have a dialogue on the topic with anyone (...I would learn more from that than a one-sided internal monologue with myself or our team). Thanks, James.