Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#131

Post by mont » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #69

kkarakk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions until someone targets your host and gets it shut down.

I'm not familiar with Zulipchat specifically but unless you're running a community with thousands of concurrent users then you could easily host most self-hostable chat platforms on a low powered devices (eg Raspberry Pi) on a home broadband internet connection. Obviously this is a less than ideal solution, but my point is you're not reliant on AWS / OVH / Digital Ocean / whoever you choose for hosting.

You are still reliant on your isp however.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#132

Post by notacoward » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #29

From a technical standpoint what they're saying is if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity if a Puerto Rican guy from Orlando goes to Iran and gets banned, it's all about the IP not the person. Seems they might want to tone down their bans starting from the moment the policy came to be vs doing it from the dawn of Slack's time, not sure how…

> if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services

That's misleading. It might be more accurate to say "if any IP you have ever used matches these countries..." but there seem to be other cases where even that doesn't explain the bans.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#133

Post by revskill » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

This kind of treating user accounts and data like a Recycle Bin should be abandoned. If you , Slack , could do whatever u like with the things you don't create, you're a trash, too.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#134

Post by mmjaa » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #122

jeswin wrote: post #74

As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

On the other hand the regime supports destabilizing groups throughout the middle east. They want to contend to be the main influence there along with Saudi. They also from time to time threaten oil supplies and threaten Europe with restarting their missile programme. They’ve been quite nettlesome. However, with more energy independence the present US administration seems to be disengaging from the ME, in contrast to…

>On the other hand the regime supports destabilizing groups throughout the middle east. They want to contend to be the main influence there along with Saudi.

As does the USA. So?

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#135

Post by gaius » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #103

sneak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal process is filing a lawsuit against Slack, provided the person wronged didn’t already agree to give up that right when accepting Slack’s TOS.

Even if it wasn't given up, what would the lawsuit complain be, and what would one gain from it if it succeeds? Isn't Slack legally entitled to shut down any accounts at any time?

GDPR holds that you own your data and are entitled to be provided a download of it. Not sure what the Canadian equivalent is, if any.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#136

Post by niea_11 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #103

sneak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal process is filing a lawsuit against Slack, provided the person wronged didn’t already agree to give up that right when accepting Slack’s TOS.

Even if it wasn't given up, what would the lawsuit complain be, and what would one gain from it if it succeeds? Isn't Slack legally entitled to shut down any accounts at any time?

(Maybe this a stupid question) Why should they be entitled if you are a paying customer? Do they give you a backup of your activity on their platform before closing the account?

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#137

Post by whoisthemachine » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #74

As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

As an insider, I have no hostility towards Iran, and would prefer that our government ally itself with them instead of Saudi Arabia (if it has to choose at all). However, our government is a representative government, meaning it favors those whom it profits most to represent. Sometimes this works in favor of the common American, sometimes it doesn't.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#138

Post by cevn » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #114

1) Is there a way to sync your Slack with a Mattermost or similar? It's nice to have both public and private in case one dies. 2) The US has a reputation for being quite aggressive with certain things. Can't be surprised if some firms take steps that seem overkill. Not that it makes it better, but rocks and hard places.

There is an unofficial solution called matterbridge but it's not great. I would just recommend taking regular backups of your slack data, you can export it to Mattermost.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#139

Post by jpeeler » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

u801e wrote: post #88

startupdiscuss wrote: post #59

I think Slack is sending a clear and strong message: use a VPN!

Or use open source alternatives instead.

This! Open source helps protect users' freedoms.

However, I am sympathetic when you're talking about software that needs to be run server side. Because in that case, you almost always have to deploy and manage the infrastructure yourself (or know somebody to do it that you trust), which is just too much for most people.

With chat specifically, you might be able to avoid self-hosting by using something that supports federation. Personally I'm rooting for Matrix to establish itself here.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#140

Post by the_other_guy » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #74

As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

This. It's funny that the West is blaming Iran 24/7 for terrorism while 3/4 of terrorist attacks are just Sunni against Shia mainly in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the other 1/4 is Sunni against non-muslims.