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

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

#151

Post by bgarbiak » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:48 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?

IANAL but cutting you off your everyday job and crucial documents (causing stress, money problems, hopefully not: unemployment) only because you happened to open an account in a random country seems like a reason good enough for a lawsuit. What to gain: compensation, and that damn' account.

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

#152

Post by andybak » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

underyx wrote: post #13

andybak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran's been on my list of "wanna go" destinations for a while (Food and architecture mainly). Looks like I'd have to choose between that and having any connection with a US based company. Great.

I know it's inconvenient, but you could still work around this by using a burner phone during your trip, no?

Yeah but my laptop is more problematic. I'm responsible for a dozen client websites so I need to take my work environment on holiday with me in case of emergency. I guess I could take a Chromebook or something and rely on ssh but I really hate coding without my pet IDE and I've never got the hang of Vim.

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

#153

Post by mcnesium » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

This is why we all should not be using these kinds of services, at least in a production setting. We should run our own services based on open source software, federate them, share and improve them, and never depend on any third party.

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

#154

Post by jki275 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #125

jki275 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans have as their only understanding a picture of Iran in their minds of the overthrow of the shah and IEDs in the past 14 years of war. Very few Americans would even understand that Iran isn't like the rest of the ME and has a very different history. Americans in general aren't well educated about the ME and the ethnic and religious differences there -- even the past 17 years of war there haven't tipped t…

Most americans would be surprised that the situation for womens' rights, while not ideal, is significantly better in Iran than in the nation of our "good friends" Saudi Arabia. By very nearly any metric: Number of women with professional educated jobs, number of women with bachelors degrees or masters degrees from large, recognized universities, number of women who drive their own vehicles independently around their…

It was that way in Afghanistan in the 70s as well.

Yeah -- agree, most Americans simply aren't able to identify the differences between the ME countries.

SA is a marriage of convenience, nobody likes them even though we have a somewhat tenuous alliance.

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

#155

Post by matt_the_bass » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

FYI US export controls generally apply to nationals of an embargoed country even when they are outside of that country. Is the person in question an Iranian national or does slack have reason to believe? Then they are required to not provide their export controlled product, service or knowledge. The us government does not offer a “graceful” stoppage of service allowance.

Yes this is annoying but probably not slacks fault.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

TheGrumpyBrit wrote: post #79

wil421 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you have employees in Syria? It’s a violation of federal sanctions. Edit: In the US, UK, and EU.

Which might mean American companies can't employ people in Syria, but what does that have to do with the rest of the world?

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #73

wil421 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you have employees in Syria? It’s a violation of federal sanctions. Edit: In the US, UK, and EU.

I love when people just assume that everyone in the world just live in the US. Hackernews users are international and he uses Slack.

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by konspence » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

mont wrote: post #131

laumars wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don’t forget your electricity provider as well. Of course you could run a solar system and mesh WiFi.

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

#159

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

robteix wrote: post #105

Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should eas…

> I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge fine. I don't know how that works given how Huawei is a Chinese company, but there you go.

To clarify: private companies are not and should not be above the law.

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

#160

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 1:51 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…

Trump reimposes sanctions: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Trump's "muslim ban" nations includes Iran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13780

Active US involvement in the war in Yemen continues. The only difference of having Trump in power is that the news is full of his twitter remarks and news about prosecution of his accomplices, rather than what's actually happening elsewhere.