An Apology and an Update • Hacker News Board

Re: An Apology and an Update

#61

Post by komali2 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:37 AM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #50

mabbo wrote: post #40

I'm a big fan and critic of apologies. This one is pretty good. They admit the mistake was theirs and they take responsibility for it. They say sorry. They explain what they're going to do to fix the situation. They say they're going to learn from this and not have similar mistakes in the future. Pretty solid. The only thing that is missing, in my view, is personalization. Tell me who you are, speaking for the organi…

This apology seems very generic and sterile to me. People are boycotting their product so they apologized. They should have communicated with their users to begin with before taking such harsh actions.

From what I'm reading here, it would be impossible by your logic to effectively apologize. The only solution is to never make a mistake in the first place, which isn't a feasible expectation when dealing with humans.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#62

Post by azhenley » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #59

azhenley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This apology seems very generic and sterile to me. People are boycotting their product so they apologized. They should have communicated with their users to begin with before taking such harsh actions.

Are people actually boycotting their product? They very clearly see their free users as their non-primary market (no automatic invites, no tools for individuals to block individuals because your HR department is supposed to deal with it, limited archives, etc.) and I'm not sure a "boycott" of a free service even counts anyway. And a paying customer is not going to be able to drop Slack on one day's notice any more th…

My Twitter is full of academics with students and collaborators from all over the world that are complaining that Slack just eliminated their ability for them to communicate over the service. I'm not sure how many of them were free or paid though.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#63

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #61

azhenley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This apology seems very generic and sterile to me. People are boycotting their product so they apologized. They should have communicated with their users to begin with before taking such harsh actions.

From what I'm reading here, it would be impossible by your logic to effectively apologize. The only solution is to never make a mistake in the first place, which isn't a feasible expectation when dealing with humans.

[deleted]

Re: An Apology and an Update

#64

Post by sandGorgon » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

orthecreedence wrote: post #31

miaklesp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which platform would be better today from practical standpoint? for a remote team of developers. Matrix?

Matrix is the protocol, Riot is a Slack-like implementation of the protocol: https://riot.im/ You can use the default (free) Matrix homeserver with Riot and you'll basically have a free chat system without any setup (besides installing the client). I've been using Riot for a while now, and while Slack does seem a bit more polished, having client-side encryption for all my messages gives Riot the upper hand: I don't w…

Modular.im is their hosted product. Much cheaper than slack as well.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#65

Post by vharuck » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

roadkillon101 wrote: post #46

While "banning by ip" will work for discouraging most users, a VPN service or a Proxy service (Socks, ssh, etc) would make it irrelevant if someone wants to use a service like slack, facebook or google...It just inconveniences those who do want to use it bad enough. To me, it's a "band-aid of compliance" to whatever agency has requested them to do a ban on certain countries IPs.

IANAL, but the legal standard is often "enough effort to show you tried, but it doesn't have to be perfect."

Which is usually taken as, "enough to inconvenience unintended targets, even if intended targets can easily avoid the punishment."

Re: An Apology and an Update

#66

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #59

azhenley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This apology seems very generic and sterile to me. People are boycotting their product so they apologized. They should have communicated with their users to begin with before taking such harsh actions.

Are people actually boycotting their product? They very clearly see their free users as their non-primary market (no automatic invites, no tools for individuals to block individuals because your HR department is supposed to deal with it, limited archives, etc.) and I'm not sure a "boycott" of a free service even counts anyway. And a paying customer is not going to be able to drop Slack on one day's notice any more th…

You can block users now? At megacorp we definitely couldn't, and as much as there were people I wanted to block and mandatory channels I didn't want to be in… all of the frigging the bots were the most unbearable.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#67

Post by azhenley » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:56 AM UTC

tlb wrote: post #60

azhenley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This apology seems very generic and sterile to me. People are boycotting their product so they apologized. They should have communicated with their users to begin with before taking such harsh actions.

Saying "they should have acted differently to begin with" isn't a valid criticism of an apology, or it would apply to all apologies.

That was my point. Unless the apology is of the type "it accidentally got deployed before we had the opportunity to test the change and communicate to users..." then they shouldn't have done it to begin with.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#68

Post by kerouanton » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #29

warent wrote: post #3

I'm definitely living under a rock. Why is Slack being impacted by a trade embargo?

Any US company is not allowed to do business/operate in embargoed countries. That's what an embargo means.

I'm puzzled. Does that mean nobody uses Windows in those countries? Same for Google/FB?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#69

Post by mikestew » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:59 AM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #56

dylan604 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texts/SMS/voice calls etc are not encrypted. The NSA slurps that data up like a sponge wrapped in Brawny wrapped in a ShamWow. There's a huge list of why we can't export/sale things to certain countries, but encryption is one of them. Things that seem "innocent" enough like a hardware video box might qualify as embargoed because it has the ability to decode SSL network traffic. Can't let that tech get in the hands of…

Encryption is not considered ammo since forever now. And slack doesn't have E2E encryption, and is an american company. The NSA can just knock on the front door and ask for the data, same as they would for an ISP.

Encryption is not considered ammo since forever now.

Regardless, there remain restrictions on certain countries.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#70

Post by duxup » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #40

I'm a big fan and critic of apologies. This one is pretty good. They admit the mistake was theirs and they take responsibility for it. They say sorry. They explain what they're going to do to fix the situation. They say they're going to learn from this and not have similar mistakes in the future. Pretty solid. The only thing that is missing, in my view, is personalization. Tell me who you are, speaking for the organi…

They were very to the point.