Of course they can, but why should they? There’s nothing to lose for them (or anyone really) if they crowdfund it instead. It’s essentially a preorder and market research.

Like, you wouldn’t catch me dead paying into it but there’s nothing wrong with this strategy, until they steal the money and run, which they won’t because companies care about PR more than KS scammers do.

That’s exactly how it was with phone chargers.

Shitty fucking default charger? 10 bucks. With nokia pin? 50 bucks

Inb4 they make the batteries crap and proprietary.

Yeah exactly, defederation should be limited to instances with incompetent or malicious admins, not with crap communities.