OP here. Dear mods, you have now twice changed the description, which I understand. But would it be too much to ask to have an indication that shows that someone who is NOT the OP has changed the description? The way it is currently worded are simply not my words and I have no way of showing that. Could potentially be bad for me.
Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
331–340 of 638 posts
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP here. I would partly agree. But at the time I posted the link, I only had examples from Iranian people that are living in other countries using Slack and getting banned. Now that I have heard more stories about people from Syria and even one US person, I wouldn't post it again with that description. I'll leave it to the mods to change the description accordingly, if they feel inclined to do so. UPDATE: The mods ha…
Ethnicity != citizenship != national origin. The updated title is still screaming drama needlessly.
Truly, the drama level isn't overly high.
But the focus ought to be on banning based on access logs from years ago. With potentially unreliable geolocation. And IPv4 addresses that may have been announced from many different autonomous systems, over the years.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#333I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the…
This is a software space that could really use more devs. IRC is fine but many people can't use it because it's too technical. We need more user friendly XMPP clients with features that non-technical people want. I hate Skype but damn if the non-techies I work with don't love it.
I tried to download and run Jitsi a couple months ago for a project and it's voice quality was terrible. Skype just works. I sometimes have weird quirky bugs with Adium, and it's getting harder to justify telling my team to use it.
Get hacking folks. This space needs better tools.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until taking part in a decentralized system is a crime by itself due to potentially illegal content and your possession and distribution of that content. The distributed system does not stop to work then, but the user might risk punishment for using it, which might be even worse than not being able to use it.
When decentralized systems are illegal, only criminals will use them. Anonymously. And very likely, using your devices as botnet slaves. But pretty much, you get what you select for.
That was the same with the cryptography export restrictions during the 90s.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
One, no, you are not legally entitled to shut down accounts on the basis of race or national origin, if that's what they're doing. Two, they may have to at least return the data: if I let you use a desk at my place and you start doing business there, I am pretty sure I cannot legally refuse you entry and hold on to your papers . Three, even if they are, we're also legally entitled to call Slack incompetent losers, an…
> no, you are not legally entitled to shut down accounts on the basis of race or national origin, if that’s what they’re doing. That’s not what the parent comment said, you’re twisting it with an assumption. Slack is not legally obligated to provide Slack accounts to anyone, that was the point. > they may have to at least return the data: if I let you use a desk at my place and you start doing business there, I am pr…
> Slack is not legally obligated to provide Slack accounts to anyone
Slack is legally obligated to provide Slack accounts to people who pay, with 30 days notice for termination in most cases. There is this stipulation:
> We may terminate the Contract immediately on notice to Customer if we reasonably believe that the Services are being used by Customer or its Authorized Users in violation of applicable law.
However, if they are terminating accounts based on ethnicity that doesn't seem like a reasonable belief they can use to justify applying export controls.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#336I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the…
I would love to see more things built on open protocols. But for that to be the case, we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open protocols.
We should start by admitting that Slack beat IRC. Beat it like a cheap hallway rug. IRC was always a terrible experience for novices, and it wasn't a great experience for experts. That it had any users at all is a testament not to IRC, but to what it enabled. Slack found a way to provide the same value but with a much better user experience. And then they rapidly iterated on that experience, making it better and better.
They started out with IRC and XMPP bridges. But they eventually shut those down because they were a drag on improving the product. When faced with the same choice, IRC kept the original protocol and shut down improving the product. This was an understandable choice, but one that set up the situation where commercial developers could come in and do something radically better. Open source needs to figure out how to compete with that, or things like this will keep happening.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sourceforge actively DID block interaction with countries under sanction by the US. even though they're garbage malware distributers now it is a data point https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467444/open-source-to...
They're not garbage malware distributors anymore.
They're still garbage malware distributors in the hearts and minds of most people. People don't just forget the atrocities associated with the sourceforge name. I know I'm not going to trust them any time soon.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy is bitching so much in the thread, claiming that he's been profiled based on his race (and not the fact that he connected to Slack from Iran at some point), that it's hard to take him seriously.
Yeah imagine bitching because you lost a primary communication tool and a bunch of your saved data because of your ethnicity.
Except it isn’t because of ethnicity. There are thousands of people from Iranian descent that use Slack in the US each day and they aren’t getting banned. Nor has anyone else been banned “because of their ethnicity.” That is absolutely ludicrous. The guy who was banned is being banned for something beyond his ethnicity.
Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
#339[deleted]