Guide to Slack import and export tools • Hacker News Board

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#121

Post by chrischen » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

random4369 wrote: post #93

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll mak…

Totalitarian surveilance? While you’re at removing that from the workplace don’t forget to instigate democratic revolution in your company as well.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#122

Post by tikkabhuna » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

s3nnyy wrote: post #105

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

> "Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons." Wow, THAT is highly illegal in Europe.

In the UK they're allowed to monitor work email[0]. I'm not sure how that compares to the rest of Europe.

In financial services they monitor all kind of chat rooms, especially after the LIBOR scandal. Every chat I open gives me a disclaimer saying that chats will be monitored.

[0] https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/basic-...

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#123

Post by stedaniels » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

s3nnyy wrote: post #105

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

> "Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons." Wow, THAT is highly illegal in Europe.

Please state the relevant law that it'd be breaking, I'm genuinely curious. Compliance tools are built into most cloud and enterprise offerings that allow this. Do you not have experience of enterprise/cloud email offerings?

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#124

Post by theobon » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #68

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

> Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. Why couldn't you just ask the recipient to look on his station? > We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that Are 2 interns ever allowed to be alone together? I mean it's essentially the same, you are saying they can't be trusted so either you always need them in grou…

You are assuming that harassment was direct, sending messages to the accusers. My impression is that this was a group chatting privately about the accusers either making fun of them or coordinating actions.

While this can be done through other channels (in person or private cellphone) allowing it on corporate infrastructure without monitoring is not acceptable.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#125

Post by CaptainZapp » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #77

gumby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this has anything to do with GDPR which is about personal information of customers and users. In this case the customer is the company and I don't think GDPR applies.

The announcement email says "As part of our growth and in support of upcoming changes to EU data protection law, we’re launching new tools and features and updating our Privacy Policy and User Terms."

"As part of our growth and in support of upcoming changes to EU data protection law, we’re launching new tools and features and updating our Privacy Policy and User Terms."

That sounds like a convenient marketing bullshit bogey man to me.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#126

Post by mabermoske » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #103

random4369 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll mak…

Would you provide a small list of solutions as examples?

How about ask the intern being bullied to show the bullying messages?

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#127

Post by zifnab06 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

Arubis wrote: post #78

For companies, yeah, this makes sense. It was nice when this wasn't true, but never really expected nor required. Unfortunately, Slack also gets used for a lot of OSS communities. Arguably this was already a poor fit, but now it's even more obviously a mismatched relationship; it's unclear whether one could just start paying for a Slack account and immediately pull all DM history for something that didn't come with t…

Rocket Chat is something I've been looking into. It's...well pretty amazing so far. Open source, self hosted, bridges to slack fairly reasonably, and gives IRC style permissions. Slightly nicer for the "I'm not always logged in"/"We need a log bot" issues IRC has had.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#128

Post by zdragnar » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #97

joshenglish wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a little different. Courts ruled that work emails could be viewed, just not personal accounts used on work computers.

Additionally, unless your work environment is sophisticated enough to fiddle with the certificates on your machine, and run a MITM proxy, you should be safe using something like GMail over https. Now I'm sure some companies do manage to intercept outgoing https traffic, but I doubt that most companies do. OTOH, I still think being paranoid is the safest policy, so if you're plotting to overthrow your boss, or sell se…

If your Gmail account is through work (i.e. not a personal one) they already have access to it.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#129

Post by colemorrison » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

Wow. Ya know, for every case this might "help" solve (workplace harassment and the like), I just can't help but say ultimately it will hurt far more.

"But employers/managers/execs will operate more responsibly with more data about their employees!"

Will they really? I think they'll be able to operate more "powerfully" with respect to controlling employees... but with that power I wouldn't be surprised if the abuse outweighs the positive utility.

Additionally... this is going to kind of kill the culture between people (ESPECIALLY REMOTE) using slack. Do you really want to talk about your weekend, or forge any type of bond over chat now? Why would anyone every do anything rapport building over slack now?

Yeah yeah "but managers/employers won't be that extreme, you're being extreme." There's a lot of cases in the past where I've thought "sure an exec or manager wouldn't do X" and then sure enough, there it is at the top of HN, and the company is going under.

So...someone else on here speculated correctly. It's clearly a selling point for employers since they're the main target to increase revenue. Unfortunately I guess that means using it for interest groups goes out the window though.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#130

Post by imglorp » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

drinchev wrote: post #92

Looking at all positive comments here, this is generally a bad news. Not sure how much compliant this is with the law, but in this case the law should be more protective towards employees. I imagine the following situation I write on a company-owned piece of paper - "My boss is an idiot". Then take this piece of paper put it in an envelope ( owned by the company as well ), write the name of my colleague and seal the…

Ah, Europe might be different. In the US, if your employer owns the platform, they have the right to all the messages for compliance. We view this as "if you have something private, don't do it on corp channels." This is usually fine unless you're harassing someone or engaging in something against corp ethics.

https://www.privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/workplace-priv...