Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 638 posts

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

#161

Post by jwildeboer »

So it seems that Slack is going through their log files and closing down accounts that have used IP addresses that are considered to be in embargoed countries. I base that assumption on various comments here and on Twitter.

If true, it is definitely the worst way to do. It doesn't take into account any circumstantial evidence that could explain the use of such an IP address (vacation, VPN, BGP or a mistake in the geolocation data used) and Slack doesn't seem to offer any way to appeal or even inform other users about what happened to their contacts.

Slack should offer a configurable notification that could contain other contact methods to the banned user. Slack could also give those users at least sth like 48 hours to inform their contacts about what is going to happen. And it could offer banned users a downloadable archive of all content created to make sure no data is lost.

But the way Slack is doing it right now means that you can't trust them and one should really think about relying on their services in the future.

I am still on IRC and XMPP (Jabber) for good reasons ;)

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

#163

Post by vezycash »

gingerlime wrote: post #10

A couple of our employees from Syria also got blocked today. They were using Slack from Syria though. EDIT: I don't understand why they ban/block the account rather than "simply" block access from IPs from the country. This seems really strange and overreaching.

Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian.

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

#164

Post by pjc50 »

mc32 wrote: post #150
mmjaa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Right. So they say we’re bad, we say they’re bad. I’m all for letting them work things out on their own and stay out of their local disputes so long as they keep it local. But unfortunately with the weapons they’re willing to use against each other it may be hard to just sit on the sidelines. Any case OP was painting them as being “innocent”.

> with the weapons they’re willing to use against each other it may be hard to just sit on the sidelines.

Someone's got to keep selling them those weapons, right?

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

#165

Post by Cthulhu_ »

malloryerik wrote: post #91

This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case. Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

> Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.

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

#166

Post by mc32 »

pjc50 wrote: post #164
mc32 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So they say we’re bad, we say they’re bad. I’m all for letting them work things out on their own and stay out of their local disputes so long as they keep it local. But unfortunately with the weapons they’re willing to use against each other it may be hard to just sit on the sidelines. Any case OP was painting them as being “innocent”.

> with the weapons they’re willing to use against each other it may be hard to just sit on the sidelines. Someone's got to keep selling them those weapons, right?

I think Iran has demonstrated they ate quite capable in this regard.

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

#167

Post by jmiserez »

paraditedc wrote: post #143
laumars wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don’t need a hosting provider to self host. You don’t even need a domain name either. But in all honesty, there are hundreds of registrars and thousands of hosting providers around the world. Not all of them fall under US jurisdiction. But if you’re really really paranoid of getting shut down, there’s also .onion sites or distributed systems like IPFS. You can not prevent people from communicating on the…

I am not sure where you live, but in many places you can't host your own servers from your room because of ISP restrictions. Also, there are not a lot of places where you can find data centers that rent servers out for personal uses.

Even then it's only a question of money, and you can keep local backups without having to fear it'll all be gone tomorrow.

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

#168

Post by api »

dustinmoris wrote: post #147

Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe. - Is this all made up to prove some point? - Is this just how the US ticks right now? - Is Slack just completely gone mad? - Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays? - Is this the future of the web? The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't b…

This is what centralized silos are like, have always been like, and will always be like.

Unfortunately centralized silos also allow unprecedented convenience and ease of use. Nobody's figured out yet how to duplicate that in a decentralized or federated system.

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

#169

Post by pjc50 »

dustinmoris wrote: post #147

Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe. - Is this all made up to prove some point? - Is this just how the US ticks right now? - Is Slack just completely gone mad? - Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays? - Is this the future of the web? The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't b…

It's the dystopia of the film Brazil: someone makes a typo in a database, someone else's life is dramatically inconvenienced, and it's impossible for them to access any means of redress.

> Is this just how the US ticks right now?

Yes.

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

#170

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jimijazz wrote: post #93
robotbikes wrote: post #3

Wow. This seems rather unprecedented and unnecessary, based upon the lack of action in this regard by other companies I don't know why Slack would do this. If for instance this kind of arbitrary action took place on GitHub I could see it having a detrimental impact to free software projects. This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions.

Totally agree about going to the self-hostable path. I would add as an alternative, looking for non-US products, maybe from neutral countries. As someone mentioned in the twitter thread, this could happen to any product: Google, Facebook, even taking the bus!

"Neutral" countries also have to conform to sanctions; Switzerland is mentioned a few times but "the sanctions regime in place is based on the Federal Act on the Implementation of International Sanctions" and "Does Switzerland implement UN sanctions? - Yes."

https://sanctionsguide.eversheds-sutherland.com/countries/sw...

I get the impression that neutral in this case is being confused with some libertarian / anarchist / lawless utopia.

Post reply on HN