We have the same problem in Ukraine. Today many Ukrainian account was blocked with the reason "originating from Crimea region of Ukraine". But they are not from this regions ...
Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
291–300 of 638 posts
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#292Wow 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…
I don't think this is the future of the web. This sort of thing is a temporary blip before everybody figures out decentralised solutions for everything. Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this. A decentralised solution will continue to "just work", while centralised solutions continue to boot people off. It's pretty obvious which one is going to win.
Decentralisation has costs, and note that booting off ""disruptive"" users (however defined - spam, abuse) is an absolute necessity of running a communications service. These costs are part of why USENET died.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet is not a place. It only functions to connect people and places which exist in physical locations that are bound by national and regional laws, and the transfer of data between locations is subject to these rules.
Well said! About this particular case, what rules are applied?
- To some extent likely 15 CFR chapter VII, subchapter C.
- 31 CFR Part 560 and Appendix A to Chapter V
- Public Law 115–44 (the CAATSA)
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
She/He makes a valid argument so I think a downvote is uncalled for. As someone else pointed out: if anything is unethical here, it is the sanctions. Ensuring your company operates within the law is a business decision and not everyone has the ability to go toe to toe with the government.
The brigade here is too strong to listen to any reasons against this.
If it were my company and the potential downside of not closing accounts was personal jailtime, I'd absolutely err on the side of caution and close any account that seemed like it might land me in jail. Yes, people would get pissed off. But I'm not going to jail for them.
The real problem here is that Slack's support is horrible and there's no way to talk to them about an account closed in error.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#295If you work for an American company, get a bug report from a user you know to be in Iran against an open source project you work on during company time and fix it as a result, can the company be considered to be engaging in commerce with Iran?
Direct exchange of value has to take place. In this case no, because fixing that bug in your project doesn't benefit him specifically.
But that's one reason dumping the account of a PhD student in Canada is puzzling -- there is no evidence of exchange of value.
I suppose the argument is that the person in question visited Iran and presumably had to pay for food at some point and thus "did business with Iran" -- and that would cover the American vacationing in Cuba as well. And that's probably why they're not just banning IPs originating in the small set of sanctioned countries, and instead dropping users. But I don't like it.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#296Wow 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 always been like that. The US sanctions are not new and many countries have equivalent.
Established businesses simply block connections/signup/login from sanctioned countries. It's part of the checklist for new apps. It's really basic.
Slack is just another startup to discover that there are regulations to follow. They did very poorly on the interpretation though.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#297How can we coordinate to stop this from continuing?
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#298Wow 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…
I don't think this is the future of the web. This sort of thing is a temporary blip before everybody figures out decentralised solutions for everything. Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this. A decentralised solution will continue to "just work", while centralised solutions continue to boot people off. It's pretty obvious which one is going to win.
> I don't think this is the future of the web.
This is the future of a centralized web with products, services and companies that people salaries to develop products and services.
The decentralized internet utopia is dead. Stick a fork in it. It is a fringe populated by the modern equivalent of the grey beards of 1990s.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is another strong case for open source software development along with open, publicly available, standards and protocols. This isn't about Slack, it isn't about US sanctions law. It is about any private entity creating closed sourced, remotely hosted software. Everyone knows that APIs can be pulled at any time (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Spying can be mandated whether it is the US government, China, or anyone else…
To put a finer point on it: open communications protocols driven by free software and end-to-end encryption both are and should be above the law, at least where the law purports to create national boundaries on the internet. Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are n…
That's a nice fantasy but the reality is that humans and computers still have to physically exist inside national boundaries. Flesh and steel still count for a lot.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#300So is this really an accurate title? It seems most likely that Slack has geolocated IP addresses from account access logs, and closed accounts with hits from sanctioned countries. Perhaps going back years. That in itself seems over the top. But it doesn't constitute ethnic profiling. But if someone has a counterexample, that would be OK too.
A lot of racism and ethnic profiling is exactly like this -- actions that are individually justifiable, but somehow end up focusing on a particular race or ethnicity despite everyone "not meaning it that way".
Focusing on intent can help us feel better about ourselves when we unintentionally contribute to these problems, but if we actually want to fix them, we can't focus only on the intentional racism or intentional ethnic profiling. We have to understand and find ways to avoid the unintentional stuff too.