Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by ry-n » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

u801e wrote: post #555

nemothekid wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 backg…

> I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not developers > I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background came from for using something like IRC.

You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user. There are plenty of tech-savvy, non-developers who can get up and running with things like IRC. There are plenty more non-technical users who can't. Or at least wouldn't given the learning curve time commitment.

I'm the only person in my family who would be able to sign on to IRC in under an hour whereas they'd all be able to have slack up and running in a matter of minutes.

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

#562

Post by ptman » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

SamWhited wrote: post #448

cyphar wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix.org is really doing a good job of being a Slack replacement (it even has Slack and IRC bridges). It's also federated and has a bunch of other nice features (like e2e which is based on Signal's crypto with some improvements for group chats). I would suggest taking a look (and I would suggest that people start switching to it). Honestly, at this point, I can't really tell the difference between Slack and most "S…

Matrix.org's problem was that they reinvented the wheel (again) WRT the protocol. Now you have a protocol that if the main company goes under, probably can't be developed further and doesn't already have wide adoption and lots of clients written for it (as is the case of IRC/XMPP). HipChat had a better model here where they used XMPP (admittedly, in the worst way possible and completely misunderstood and broke the pr…

Matrix.org foundation is being founded. It has taken some time, but is quite close already: https://matrix.org/blog/2018/10/29/introducing-the-matrix-or...

The Matrix developers are familiar with XMPP, and have it covered in their FAQ: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq#what-is-the-difference-be...

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

#563

Post by u801e » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

ry-n wrote: post #561

u801e wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 backg…

> I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not developers > I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background came from for using something like IRC. You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user. There are plenty of tech-savvy, non-developers who can get up and running with things like I…

> You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user.

Unless the technical skill of the average computer user has decreased substantially in the last 10 to 15 years, that shouldn't really be the case.

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

#564

Post by sotojuan » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

u801e wrote: post #563

ry-n wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not developers > I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background came from for using something like IRC. You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user. There are plenty of tech-savvy, non-developers who can get up and running with things like I…

> You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user. Unless the technical skill of the average computer user has decreased substantially in the last 10 to 15 years, that shouldn't really be the case.

It has. Everyone uses computers now for less technical tasks, and some pretty much only use their phone or tablet.

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

#565

Post by theamk » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

u801e wrote: post #555

nemothekid wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 backg…

I think this is to enable history and mobile, for example?

Granted, I have not used IRC for a while, but last time I checked, the story for getting message history was "start a irc client inside a screen session on a server you own". And there were no mobile at all.

(I remember writing a script which exported chat logs from my desktop client to text files available over HTTP... I'd then visit those pages from cell phone to see if I had any more messages. This is not the experience I would wish on anybody)

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

#566

Post by jstanley » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #485

jstanley wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law isn't a magical paragon of morality. When the law is as clearly wrong as this one is, it should be violated.

What is so clearly wrong about trade sanctions between two countries? Do you think foreign trade is always a moral good?

The part that's clearly wrong is stopping innocent people from engaging in harmless trade. If it weren't for the sanction, it would probably be illegal for slack to deliberately block Iranians just because of the country they're from.

And something doesn't have to be morally good for stopping it to be morally bad. For example, playing chess is morally completely neutral, but it would be morally bad to attempt to ban chess.

Likewise, Iranians using slack isn't obviously morally good, it seems morally neutral, but enforcing a slack ban against Iranians is obviously morally bad.

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

#567

Post by true_religion » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #538

yamazaki wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't shut down their account because she visited Cuba, but because her account was created _from_ Cuba. It's unfortunate but I guess it's the only way Slack has to "know" where an account is from.

It's the laziest possible way. They could've looked at most frequent login IPs instead.

They should never have allowed the account to be created from Cuba in the first place. Slack when it was younger, didn't have good policies in place to actually follow US law. As such, now that they are reviewing their old records they realized they committed illegal actions that they need to clean up.

Yes, it harms their customers, but that harm and the resulting damages to Slack' reputation (and maybe legal costs), is what they must pay for being negligent in the past.

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

#568

Post by gdy » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #109

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.

Wealthy Saudi propaganda organizations? But I think the defiance is why the US elite hates Iran. They successfully kicked out a US-backed leader, humiliated Carter's rescue plan, fought off a US-backed Iraqi invasion, defied the US over nuclear proliferation. Refusing to follow US orders enrages the US. Ironically there has been extensive on-the-ground cooperation between the US and Iran while fighting ISIS in easter…

"there has been extensive on-the-ground cooperation between the US and Iran while fighting ISIS in eastern Syria."

Could you possible share a source for this?

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

#569

Post by theamk » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

ptman wrote: post #562

SamWhited wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix.org's problem was that they reinvented the wheel (again) WRT the protocol. Now you have a protocol that if the main company goes under, probably can't be developed further and doesn't already have wide adoption and lots of clients written for it (as is the case of IRC/XMPP). HipChat had a better model here where they used XMPP (admittedly, in the worst way possible and completely misunderstood and broke the pr…

Matrix.org foundation is being founded. It has taken some time, but is quite close already: https://matrix.org/blog/2018/10/29/introducing-the-matrix-or... The Matrix developers are familiar with XMPP, and have it covered in their FAQ: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq#what-is-the-difference-be...

> Matrix can be thought of as an eventually consistent global JSON db with an HTTP API and pubsub semantics - whilst XMPP can be thought of as a message passing protocol.

Finally someone gets it! A chat service should value each message and it should never lose messages due to connectivity problems.

Thank you for sharing that link, I learned something new today.

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

#570

Post by true_religion » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #184

rdl wrote: post #18

If they are just deleting accounts where someone logged in from a treasury-barred country’s IP, I wonder what happens if you BGP hijack a small amount of that address space, somehow get admins or high profile users to connect via this (run WiFi? Some kind of proxy?), and then observe the chaos.

Or if a data breach allows for account data to be stolen, then one can spoof access attempts from such IPs and seek to DOS the account access. If the removals are automated, then the most vulnerable accounts would be those of slack employees - or slack investors?

I don't think it's an access attempt that matters but actual access. You need to login via the API, not simply try and fail to get access.