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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

#351

Post by lorenzhs »

simias wrote: post #234
jstanley wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except looking at the past 20 years or so it seems clear that the trend is going the other way around. Slack itself is an example of that, not long ago it would've been a set of self-hosted tools. People have ditched IRC in favor of Discord and friends, they've ditched decentralized forums, BBSs and mailing lists for social networks, everybody hosts everything using the same four or five cloud providers, streaming an…

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I just made a Show HN post about Glowing Bear, which is a web front-end for the WeeChat IRC client: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725038. It's entirely implemented as client-side javascript, and you can easily self-host it without any requests being made to other servers. For me, it solves the problem of accessing IRC wherever I am without having to fumble with ssh on my phone or monospace text. And it doesn't have the limited functionality of these modern web IRC clients implemented in node because it's just a front-end for WeeChat, which is one of the most powerful IRC clients around.

Regarding your note on the path of least resistance leading to centralized solutions---Glowing Bear/WeeChat is definitely more work to set up than just signing up for Slack. You need a machine that runs WeeChat and get a TLS certificate so that the browser will let you connect securely. That definitely limits it to a somewhat nerdy demographic, even among the HN readers ;)

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

#352

Post by lixtra »

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.

I wish you were right. But so far the winner takes all effect and commercial benefits pushed most things to big companies. Even the archetype of decentralization, email, is being pushed to big players by spam control.

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

#354

Post by ya3r »

First off, as many know, this is not a single incident. This has happened to many of us (including me) from "sanctioned" countries. (I am from Iran, but live in Germany)

But this makes me think. Many of the services I use are from US companies. Most notable are: Gmail (Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.), Github, Dropbox, Trello and Toggl. Should I be worried? Should I actually start switching away from these services before they close my accounts and remove all my data without notice?

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

#355

Post by mirimir »

kitd wrote: post #312
saryant wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this isn’t about content, it’s about OFAC designations. That’s the office in the US Treasury department that says who Americans can’t do business with. They’re the ones that enforce sanctions and Iran is on their list. Penalties for noncompliance are stiff and there are no safe harbour provisions. (IANAL but I have implemented systems to check OFAC lists at other companies and seen it result in similar situat…

Even if what you say is technically true, Slack appear to have interpreted that as saying that they can't do business with anyone who as ever in the past opened up the Slack app in a designated country, whatever their nationality and/or reason for being there. At the very least, that is a shoddy algorithm.

> ... who as ever in the past opened up the Slack app in a designated country ...

But they don't know that. They have IP addresses. And they do geolocation. But IP-based geolocation isn't reliable enough for that.

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

#356

Post by chisleu »

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…

Did he visit Iran and forget to uninstall Slack before he went?

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

#357

Post by briandear »

blindwatchmaker wrote: post #309
hnauz wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only is if you think someone who has ever set foot on Iran is an ethnic Irani. You just have to look at this HN thread to see that is false, as this problem also applies to other embargoed countries.

> It only is if you think someone who has ever set foot on Iran is an ethnic Irani. We're both adults here and I assume we both can realize that splitting these hairs doesn't make my statement that banning everyone that's ever logged on Iran from slack is, in effect, a ban on Iranian ethnic users?

No it’s not. There are millions of Persians in the US that haven’t been to since the 1970s. Those are of the same ethnicity as someone living in Tehran. There are millions of Persians living in Europe as well — also ethnic “Iranian” who would be unaffected by a geo-ban.

So no, a ban based on signing in from a specific locale has zero to do with ethnicity or race.

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

#358

Post by ashelmire »

aetherson wrote: post #342
wpietri wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What features does IRC lack? The messaging, chat rooms or PMs, private servers, file sharing, etc has existed forever. You can also build any sort of tool for integration with it.

I guess it lacks persistence and access to history? But there are surely ways to solve that.

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

#359

Post by chisleu »

jwildeboer wrote: post #161

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 geo…

Vacation isn't a valid legal reason to export crypto.

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

#360

Post by mdjasper »

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

    if account.countries.include(/ir.*an/)
        account.delete()
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