My perspective on the matter is as follows:
0. I was aware of the project from browsing the Publishing category on Kickstarter. I didn’t bother to open it or read it because a pickup artist handbook is uninteresting and unappealing to me, and I knew I wouldn’t be contributing to its fund. I wasn’t made aware of how big a problem it really was (i.e. explicit instruction to ignore personal space, make bold physical contact literally within the realm of sexual assault) until the evening before the funding period was scheduled to end.
1. I personally think the project should’ve been shut down for just plain being abhorrent.
2. I acknowledge Kickstarter’s decision to judge the project based on the information submitted in the official project page, not based on content (on another site) which the author promised to include in the final product.
3. I acknowledge that the product itself (and the production thereof) isn’t against the law, even though it exists solely to encourage and instruct readers on how to break the law by wearing down, invading, and assaulting others.
4. Kickstarter had a tough choice to make. Had they shut the project down, they would’ve satisfied a huge number of loyal decent members of the KS community, but there would’ve been a storm of pissy whining from the PUA community about censorship and bias and favoritism and persecution and personal politics.
5. With all that in mind, the only thing they can really do to be “fair” (or as fair as possible, given the circumstances) is to say “Okay, we weren’t clear enough in the rules, that’s on us. We’re gonna let this one slide, but we’re rewriting the rules and this shit is never gonna happen again.”
6. If nothing changes, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna stop backing projects on Kickstarter, and when the time comes to launch my own various projects, I’ll almost certainly go through a different service.