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Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

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

#341

Post by IshKebab »

SamWhited wrote: post #305

I'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 wonder if part of the reason we don't have any great open source Slack competitors (yes I know about Mattermost, Zulip, etc.) is that so many open source developers (or at least commenters here) seem to be under the illusion that IRC is a reasonable alternative to Slack.

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

#342

Post by aetherson »

wpietri wrote: post #336
SamWhited wrote: post #305

I'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. S…

Word. I don't love Slack, but IRC is awful, and an open protocol replacement for Slack would have to make easier many of the features that Slack has and IRC lacks.

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

#343

Post by briandear »

blindwatchmaker wrote: post #277
hnauz wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happened at all, that's why it's hard to take him seriously. He makes it look like Slack went out of their way to look at all of their users and check of what race they are to ban those who are Iranians, when they just made a geoip check.

Assuming that for some reason I should take your word over his, banning for "having logged on in Iran at some point" is, effectively, banning for ethnicity.

I am not sure you know what ethnicity means. “Iranian” isn’t an ethnicity.

Banning anyone who has ever used Farsi in Slack, now that would be a bit closer to banning for ethnicity.

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

#344

Post by aroberge »

hnauz wrote: post #249
blindwatchmaker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah imagine bitching because you lost a primary communication tool and a bunch of your saved data because of your ethnicity.

That's not what happened at all, that's why it's hard to take him seriously. He makes it look like Slack went out of their way to look at all of their users and check of what race they are to ban those who are Iranians, when they just made a geoip check.

> That's not what happened at all ... when they just made a geoip check ...

It sounds as though you have access to data that the rest of people on HN do not. Would you care to share your source? Are you certain he would not have been banned by Slack if he were not an Iran citizen (just Canadian) but would have (possibly) used Slack when travelling to Iran?

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

#345

Post by ChrisClark »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #333
SamWhited wrote: post #305

I'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…

I've heard Matrix might be a good IRC replacement. But it also still looks rough to me. I only tried it once, but didn't continue as I didn't need it for anything.

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

#346

Post by walterbell »

SamWhited wrote: post #305

I'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…

An effort is underway to standardize E2E encrypted group messaging in the IETF with the MLS [1] protocol. Open-source participants include Wire and Matrix. Commercial participants include Facebook, Cisco, Google and Apple.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/

Wire is open-source today and usable by regular people, with E2E encryption and email-only accounts.

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

#347

Post by ryanmercer »

natch wrote: post #313
bad_user wrote: post #258

This happened to our cofounder as well. His Slack account was blocked today, with that same message. The crazy thing is that he's Irish and living in the EU, with no actual ties with the countries being mentioned. He does travel for business purposes outside of Europe, but again, not in the listed countries.

Ireland, Iran, common mixup. /s

We have people confuse it in my office actually, new hires will just assume Ireland is 'IR' not 'IE' and enter stuff into the system as country of origin 'IR' which throws off all sorts of red flags in our system, similarly when they see 'KR' as country of origin they freak out thinking it's North Korea not South Korea.

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

#349

Post by beobab »

eponeponepon wrote: post #327
rvense wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Slack just proved that you actually don't have to pick between malice and incompetence.

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".

My dad used to say: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained with stupidity", but I love yours too.

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

#350

Post by bookbinder »

jstanley wrote: post #188
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…

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 is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this.

Only techies care about decentralization. Most people would rather follow a Twitter feed rather than an RSS feed. Most would prefer a mega forum like Reddit rather than multiple, standalone forums with separate accounts. There are also network effects that give centralized platforms more of a competitive advantage.

I keep hearing people talk about the need for decentralized social media, but nobody knows how to make it an attractive, viable option for the masses...especially when such a solution wouldn't be as profitable (or as frictionless) as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

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