Bye bye BetterSlack • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#271

Post by gnicholas » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #117

barbegal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disclaimer would not work. Disclaimers might work where there is a risk that the user will violate the acceptable use policy but this cease and desist letter has effectively said that all users will violate the acceptable use policy therefore the disclaimer would be quickly dismissed by any court of law. As a slightly bad analogy imagine a disclaimer that customers of a fairground ride might experience back pain. I…

False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.

I don't think Slack would ever go after end-users who install something like this. But they could go after the creator, who presumably created a Slack account in order to be able to build the extension, and who therefore must have agreed to the T&Cs. This could include a no-reverse-engineering clause that prohibits the sorts of things that this extension does.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#272

Post by indysigners » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

This is such a big shame, especially since the native Slack app is consuming such a lot of processor and battery power and it runs much more efficiently in the browser!

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#273

Post by doesnt_know » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

Has anything like this ever been hashed out in court?

I'm curious where the line is from a legal perspective? Ad blocker (purposely deny some scripts from running)? Custom user styling? User scripts (greasemonkey/tamper monkey etc), browser "reader views"? Accessibility tools? The browser dev tools?

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#274

Post by r1b » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

Build protocols - not platforms

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#275

Post by paulddraper » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

barbegal wrote: post #158

jahewson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. It’s fine to have a disclaimer which says “this will void your warranty”, just look at smartphone jailbreaking. He’s not breaking Slack’s terms of service - his users are. But then the next logical step is to argue that he’s inducing a breach of contract by his users, which seems to be the case.

A disclaimer which says “this will void your warranty” is perfectly legal. Breaching the limitations of a warranty is not illegal. In fact in some jurisdictions, the limitations of a warranty are themselves not enforceable (in the USA under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) Inducing a breach of contract is a tort [1]. It does not apply in all cases where someone is induced to break a contract but in this case where the…

How many companies do you think have successfully sued ad blockers?

There's far more of a financial incentive there.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#276

Post by g3rv4 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

State_Of_Mind wrote: post #269

Hey g3rv4 sorry to hear the news. Although I personally don't use slack, when I saw your last post (congrats on the double front page btw) I was super impressed by the stuff you'd added, sorry to see it go. So this seems rather unfortunate now but the first thought I had on reading your initial post was "wow, I wish he'd come and do some similar stuff for riot[1], but unless slack shut him down there's no chance." Ho…

woooooowwwwwww so... I could use riot to connect to my company’s slack?

that’s a dream come true!!! I’ll def check it out

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#277

Post by realusername » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #102

scoom wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A binding agreement? Why would he sign one of those?

You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.

> You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.

That's only in the US as far as I know, everywhere else you can't be bound by an agreement without signing anything.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#278

Post by mattigames » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #271

mattigames wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.

I don't think Slack would ever go after end-users who install something like this. But they could go after the creator, who presumably created a Slack account in order to be able to build the extension, and who therefore must have agreed to the T&Cs. This could include a no-reverse-engineering clause that prohibits the sorts of things that this extension does.

Do you know about an instance where something like that already happened?

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#279

Post by Rapzid » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #191

Hmm. Can website acceptable use policies really prevent you from distributing/using browser extensions? Do we really not control our own browsers anymore?

I highly doubt it, particularly in the absence of any legal precedence.. I'm vaguely aware of a couple cases where EUAs were enforced, but I believe they were in the context of avoiding monetary compensation.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#280

Post by tptacek » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

barbegal wrote: post #167

jjeaff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say a large part of blizzard winning this case was the intent of the software. The interfering software was intended to facilitate cheating. I think it would be unlikely to have won, had the software been made to streamline the game or make it run faster.

I agree with you there, to win the case there would have to be some economic reason for Slack to not want users to use this extension. The reason they state is "Injecting javascript into Slack via Chrome extension can have an impact on the privacy and security of our customers and our product. Furthermore, this can create reliability issues when we ship product updates." If they can prove that is true then the case s…

If it alters the DOM, it impacts security, and in a very significant way, since DOM security is in a sense the most important security barrier between untrustworthy content and all the messages a user has access to on a Slack.