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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

#371

Post by dahart »

lukeschlather wrote: post #335
dahart wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> Slack is legally obligated to provide Slack accounts to people who pay

Rather, Slack agrees to provide accounts to people who pay and agree to the contract in return.

That little stipulation is exactly what is in effect here. Slack believes the users are in violation of the agreement, and under the legal rules that Slack established and controls, they enforce immediate termination.

> if they are terminating accounts based on ethnicity

This defending of the argument based on wild assumptions that Slack is ethnically profiling is a bad place to start from. That hasn't been shown, nor is it very likely.

On the other hand, Slack is legally obligated to block traffic to Iran, and it's within reason to assume an account that ever had any traffic in Iran broke the law. It's certainly possible that Amir forgot that he used an Iran proxy, or traveled there. It's possible that someone on his team broke the rule without his knowledge. It's also possible that Slack made a mistake, which can and does happen from time to time at many companies when trying to enforce international laws using only IP traffic logs. None of that points at Slack intentionally terminating accounts based on ethnicity.

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

#372

Post by jamiek88 »

ryandrake wrote: post #363
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…

Not necessarily disagreeing but could someone provide some solid examples of IRC being a terrible user experience? Whenever IRC comes up, people say it lost and it’s not the right technology. When pressed, they wave their hands around saying “...because, uh, user experience reasons!” As a longtime user of IRC, I’m probably blind to these issues. What’s so bad about it that causes people to put up with these inadequat…

setting up, just getting started with IRC for a non-tech person is basically way too hard bordering on impossible from their perspective.

We can talk about all the other issues around persistence and UX but just getting started is something beyond the vast majority of computer users.

It’s really hard for us to remember and empathize with this.

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

#373

Post by dyarosla »

jki275 wrote: post #365
aetherson wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In general, IRC is no worse than Slack... What features are you talking about?

In general Windows is no worse than Mac and vice versa. Your argument reads in the same way.

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

#374

Post by ryandrake »

ryanmercer wrote: post #279
yholio wrote: post #126

Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": you data, business, money, most intimate secrets and livelihood is at the whims of a foreign corporation that will stop at nothing if it means 2 cents more on their bottom line, or gets them on the good side of a government entity. You have no rights, you have no intrinsic human valuu and you have no means to fight for yourself.

>Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": If you don't hold it, you don't own it. HN types seem to not get this, at all, they think companies should indefinitely preserve all their data and make it available on demand, no matter what, in-perpetuity. The MailChimp thread yesterday now this one and the gods help you if you suggest people backup their data regularly instead of relying upon a 3rd party to always ha…

Remember yesterday’s thread from the guy who lost his MailChimp account suddenly? Nobody learns, and we’re going to keep reading these articles over and over while “cloud” is still a thing.

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

#375

Post by lostmyoldone »

user5994461 wrote: post #246
Iv wrote: post #87

If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?

Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions. We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.

The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries.

If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws.

But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view?

Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone, even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to be applied broadly.

Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse.

If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably not the intent of the embargo.

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

#376

Post by weberc2 »

ashelmire wrote: post #358
aetherson wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve honestly never found an IRC client with a sane UI. If it’s tedious for technical folks, why do you expect it to be preferable to slack?

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

#377

Post by weberc2 »

jamiek88 wrote: post #372
ryandrake wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily disagreeing but could someone provide some solid examples of IRC being a terrible user experience? Whenever IRC comes up, people say it lost and it’s not the right technology. When pressed, they wave their hands around saying “...because, uh, user experience reasons!” As a longtime user of IRC, I’m probably blind to these issues. What’s so bad about it that causes people to put up with these inadequat…

setting up, just getting started with IRC for a non-tech person is basically way too hard bordering on impossible from their perspective. We can talk about all the other issues around persistence and UX but just getting started is something beyond the vast majority of computer users. It’s really hard for us to remember and empathize with this.

I’m a tech person and I struggle. It’s a chat app; shouldn’t be so complex.

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

#378

Post by adriand »

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…

I think as ethical, intelligent and conscious individuals, we folks in the developer and hacker community want people to make decisions on the basis of principles, when the reality is that people generally make decisions on the basis of convenience. In fact, people are often willing to sacrifice their principles (to a certain extent) in the name of convenience.

If we want people to use principled technology, then we need to be able to honestly advertise products as "it's just as good as X, and also doesn't violate [your privacy|human rights|the environment|etc.]" If we have to say, "It's not quite as good, but..." then we're dead in the water. (Side note: I switched to Firefox out of principle and I'm hopeful it will hold the line on market share, since it really is just as good as Chrome.)

The issue is that we're dealing with corporations who aren't just rich and powerful, they are also innovative, agile, and laser-focused on providing consumer value. Slack is doing an amazing job at serving their users!

You wrote, "we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open protocols." It's a really interesting dilemma and I suspect it's one that isn't solved by better technology, better design, etc., but rather by addressing the base economics of the situation. We need a scenario where principled, open-source, ethical technology is generating the kind of investment we're seeing in Silicon Valley unicorns so they can innovate the same way.

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

#379

Post by scruffyherder »

walterbell wrote: post #346
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.

All the usual suspects. It'll die like the google chat thing(s).

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

#380

Post by amaccuish »

danso wrote: post #24
jstanley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were using Slack from Syria though. This doesn't excuse anything. People in Syria are people too. This is similar to how people were calling for websites to block access to Europe over the copyright thing. The internet is a place where you don't even need to have a nationality. It is a place where we can all exist as pure thoughts. Why are we letting politics fuck it up?

The Syrian ban comes from a U.S. federal sanction. Not arguing that the sanction is right, or that Slack is correctly implementing its adherence, but this is not a similar situation to people calling for a boycott to make a point.

Ye it's probably worse. Companies are happy to go along with US law, but can't be bothered to follow the law of other jurisdictions...
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