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An Apology and an Update

slackhq.com

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Re: An Apology and an Update

#131

Post by DonHopkins »

briandear wrote: post #95
nimbius wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We did not block any user based on their nationality or ethnicity. Okay, so how did you block them? >As is standard in the enterprise software industry, Slack uses location information principally derived from IP addresses to implement these required blocks. So, you blocked users based on their nationality. >We do not collect, use, or possess any information about the nationality or ethnicity of our users. you clear…

IP != nationality or ethnicity.

You gotta wait for IPV7 where your DNA sequence is your IP address, so they can block you and all your descendants.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#132

Post by DonHopkins »

dogecoinbase wrote: post #128
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…

Are you joking? It provides no specific action they're taking to prevent this type of thing in the future, and it's internally inconsistent (who are "the people whose accounts we intended to disable" who they "will not deactivate their account and they will be able to access Slack when they return to countries or regions for which no blocking is required"?). I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends who w…

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ...

Some of us use Slack because we have work to do.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#133

Post by dogecoinbase »

da_chicken wrote: post #25
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #22

> We will soon begin blocking access to our service from IP addresses associated with an embargoed country. Users who travel to a sanctioned country may not be able to access Slack while they remain in that country. Is Slack legally required to do this? As long as they aren't knowingly accepting payment from these countries, shouldn't they be in the clear? How are other tech companies dealing with this? Does Google b…

> Is Slack legally required to do this? Yes, absolutely. Breaking sanctions is not just illegal, it's a criminal offense . There have been sanctions against Iran since roughly when Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [1] in May of this year. The CFO of Huawei was arrested in Canada per a request by the US because of their dealings with Iran [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_C…

Nope -- the stipulations of the licensing policy on Internet freedom in Iran are still in effect: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...

See specific of the current application of the rules here: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Page...

   "Specifically, section 560.540 of the ITR authorizes the exportation from the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located, to persons in Iran of services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user."

Re: An Apology and an Update

#134

Post by dogecoinbase »

DonHopkins wrote: post #132
dogecoinbase wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? It provides no specific action they're taking to prevent this type of thing in the future, and it's internally inconsistent (who are "the people whose accounts we intended to disable" who they "will not deactivate their account and they will be able to access Slack when they return to countries or regions for which no blocking is required"?). I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends who w…

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ... Some of us use Slack because we have work to do.

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ... Some of us use Slack because we have work to do.

How noble in reason! Some of us were banned without justification from our jobs today via the unjustified unilateral action of a private company. In fact, my job is to help companies secure their internal communications. So, talking with people about this was my job. What was yours?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#135

Post by DonHopkins »

dogecoinbase wrote: post #134
DonHopkins wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ... Some of us use Slack because we have work to do.

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ... Some of us use Slack because we have work to do. How noble in reason! Some of us were banned without justification from our jobs today via the unjustified unilateral action of a private company. In fact, my job is to help companies secure their internal communications. So, talking with people about this was my job . What was yours?

Not shilling cryptocurrencies. ;)

Re: An Apology and an Update

#136

Post by mikenew »

techntoke wrote: post #113
orthecreedence wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Going to go ahead and throw Matrix/Riot out there as a great alternative.

I'm still hoping they'll implement an SMS gateway. If Matrix could replace Google Voice too, that would rock my world.

There is one. I'm using it, it works, but it's a little buggy: https://github.com/tijder/SmsMatrix. I haven't been able to ignore my message app and trust the bridge 100% yet.

I'm hoping to spend some of my christmas break contributing some work to the project. I agree, bridging SMS into a chat service that you can use from anywhere is a killer feature.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#137

Post by lostlogin »

rootkea wrote: post #129
malloryerik wrote: post #80

Faith in Slack mostly restored.

Nope sorry. Slack is a walled garden. And relying on a walled garden means handing over your control, freedom and privacy which eventually gonna lead to similar kind of exploitation/abuse. As another HN commenter @SamWhited put it, "Using a proprietary protocol that doesn't allow any form of federation is an unacceptable way to build a global community". We need to develop and use FLOSS protocols/tools as much as pos…

These are good points, but wow are the walls Slack has built beautiful. The webhooks make so many things better.

Is there a service you recommend?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#138

Post by mikenew »

derf_ wrote: post #33
orthecreedence wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Going to go ahead and throw Matrix/Riot out there as a great alternative.

I pretty much gave up on Matrix after the following exchange: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8697151 Perhaps I am overreacting, but that sort of attitude on matters core to basic privacy in the post-Snowden era seems both problematic and incurable.

Yes, you are overreacting. Perfect is the enemy of good. Encryption is not so easy when you have a room with potentially hundreds of users, each with many devices, and you have to safely share keys between all of them. I'm using it, and even in a 1 to 1 chat it can be a burden. They are working on it, and it will be default once it's out of beta. But there are reasons why you may not want to use it. And that's a personal choice that people should be allowed to make. Would you also disallow public rooms? Or bridges into non-encrypted services?

I care about encryption, you care about encryption, and they care about encryption. "Giving up on them" and saying their attitude is "problematic and incurable" is hurting, not helping.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#139

Post by whoisjuan »

hrktb wrote: post #126

It’s still profoundly disturbing to my eyes. Technically their underlying problem is relying on IP ranges, wich is flawed and raises false positives all the time. They seem to recognize they shouldn’t be doing irreversible and critical action with only that info, yet will still use it to drop traffic. To me their message is “sorry we screwed with your accounts, going forward we’ll only screw with your messages”. Am I…

My guess is that this was a poorly thought and prioritized issue.

Probably they asked some junior engineer to write a database query looking for a list of accounts with IP logs that matched a range of IPs coming from the banned countries, and then they passed that list to another junior employee who deactivated the accounts.

Of course, there are many reasons for those IPs that are not your default/work/home, to be logged against your Slack account. They probably didn't think this throughly.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#140

Post by Gibbon1 »

hrktb wrote: post #126

It’s still profoundly disturbing to my eyes. Technically their underlying problem is relying on IP ranges, wich is flawed and raises false positives all the time. They seem to recognize they shouldn’t be doing irreversible and critical action with only that info, yet will still use it to drop traffic. To me their message is “sorry we screwed with your accounts, going forward we’ll only screw with your messages”. Am I…

I find it profoundly disturbing the US foreign policy has been hijacked by Israel and Saudi Arabia.
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