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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

#551

Post by SamWhited »

walterbell wrote: post #527
SamWhited wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Wire developed and funded? This was my biggest problem with Matrix (unsustainable funding model for the protocol and no proper standards body). Why not just use XMPP? Yes, everyone hates XML, but the protocol is well designed, has sustainable funding (via the IETF and XSF), and there's lots of experience out there, and it's flexible enough to develop services like Slack on top of.

They are VC funded and sell services (Wire Pro, Wire Red) to large companies.

That seems like enough of a reason not to pick it as a good shared base protocol, even if technically it's good. It's nice that they're funding MLS though; looking forward to the results of that effort.

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

#552

Post by manigandham »

jstanley wrote: post #118
manigandham wrote: post #72

Earlier 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.

That's true of snail mail, or telegrams, or even phone calls. But I'd argue the internet is so fast, and so high bandwidth, and so always-available, that it is a qualitatively different thing from merely a transfer of data between physical locations. It is a place where things happen that aren't just transfers of information between physical places. For example, Hacker News is a place within the wider place that is t…

I don't see what the velocity of the transfer has to do with the rules. Seems rather arbitrary.

Hacker News isn't a place because you're just requesting data from their servers with a well-known DNS name. In fact everyone who "visits" is technically getting a private copy sent to them, and it's all data being transferred between borders. You can clearly see it reflected in internet routing where transit is defined by political and business connections, and things like the Great Firewall of China.

Calling it a community fits better sure, but that just describes a group of individuals and doesn't create any political sovereignty. People still live in physical locations which are bound by laws, there's no way around that.

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

#553

Post by manigandham »

malloryerik wrote: post #197
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #165

Earlier 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.

If the sanctions demand this, then the sanctions are outrageously unethical. If the sanctions don't explicitly demand it and banning ethnic Iranians is just "erring on the side of caution" then yes, sorry, but Slack is being outrageously unethical. Even if the sanctions do demand it, to me this is a reason to seriously consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, Switzerland, etc., or pro…

> then that's their duty, so yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court

No, it's definitely not. What's with the hyperbole? Do you consider every single person and company in the US unpatriotic and unethical then because these sanctions exist?

We need less corporate involvement in politics. If you don't like the laws then you are free and welcome to participate in the government to change them but expecting a private company to go to the Supreme Court (!) over sanctions is just ridiculous.

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

#554

Post by tracker1 »

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…

Slack doesn't really offer much more than could be offered over existing IRC with an updated client and some bots on a network.

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

#555

Post by u801e »

nemothekid wrote: post #507
adriand wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If we want people to use principled technology, it has to be usable, full stop. As a developer, being able to say "I'm willing to sacrifice convenience, in the name of principle", is a privileged position - you know how to navigate software when it gets difficult - other people don't. What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not everyone using Slack is a developer. The world doesn't consi…

> What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not everyone using Slack is a developer.

I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not developers. They just used the mIRC client on windows to do that. They also managed to configure their email and news clients to send and read email and browse usenet.

I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background came from for using something like IRC.

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

#556

Post by EB-Barrington »

adventured wrote: post #306
kakwa_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly never quite understood the extremely high stance against Iran. Iran has not really stage any offensive wars since 1856 (and most of the XIXe century wars were in fact to recover/maintain control over the Persian Empire which was slowly eaten by the Russian and the UK). Since 1940, Iran was constantly meddled with by foreign powers, first being invaded during the WW2 by the Allies and the Soviets, with the S…

> Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was appointed by a dictator. The only part of that process that was even slightly democratic, was indirectly via Majlis vote. The people of Iran never specifically elected Mossadegh. > No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they want the Bomb to be at peace. How does being at peace squar…

Mossadegh was appointed Prime Minister, by the Shah, after a nomination from the Iran Majlis (Parliament). The system of representative democracy that allowed his appointment is similar to many countries around the world today, where the people do not select the leader, the people vote for the members of Parliament, who in turn select the leader (such as Australia).

The Shah carried out the appointment, only after the democratically elected parliament members nominated Mossadegh in an overwhelming majority vote).

This could be considered "slightly more democratic", only if you consider the Australia to be "slightly more democratic" than a dictatorship such as North Korea.

I'm not going to attempt to untangle your final paragraph, only to say you have made some very large claims without any sources to back up your claims.

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

#557

Post by EB-Barrington »

jeswin wrote: post #74

As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

Wahhabist, to be more specific.

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

#558

Post by eloff »

soheil wrote: post #501
eloff wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a Canadian student. How is this acceptable in any way?

The status of being a student does not expunge your status of being a citizen of your country of origin nor does it cut all your ties with said country. Part of sanctions is to pressure citizens of sanctioned countries in order for them to seek change in their governments.

Ah, I read that wrong. It's different if he's on a student via I suppose vs having permanent residency

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

#559

Post by blancNoir »

SamWhited wrote: post #457
walterbell wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is Wire developed and funded? This was my biggest problem with Matrix (unsustainable funding model for the protocol and no proper standards body). Why not just use XMPP? Yes, everyone hates XML, but the protocol is well designed, has sustainable funding (via the IETF and XSF), and there's lots of experience out there, and it's flexible enough to develop services like Slack on top of.

Here's what Moxie Marlinspike has to say about the drawbacks of XMPP.

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

"XMPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a “living standard.” Despite its capacity for protocol “extensions,” however, it’s undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich media, which can’t realistically be deployed on mobile devices. If XMPP is so extensible, why haven’t those extensions quickly brought it up to speed with the modern world?

Like any federated protocol, extensions don’t mean much unless everyone applies them, and that’s an almost impossible task in a truly federated landscape. What we have instead is a complicated morass of XEPs that aren’t consistently applied anywhere. The implications of that are severe, because someone’s choice to use an XMPP client or server that doesn’t support video or some other arbitrary feature doesn’t only affect them, it affects everyone who tries to communicate with them. It creates a climate of uncertainty, never knowing whether things will work or not. In the consumer space, fractured client support is often worse than no client support at all, because consistency is incredibly important for creating a compelling user experience."

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

#560

Post by nradov »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #540
nradov wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why free/libre software advocates talk so frequently about technologies that could abstract flesh and steel away.

How exactly would that work?
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