An Apology and an Update • Hacker News Board

Re: An Apology and an Update

#121

Post by throw-far-away » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #116

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…

The apology wasn't good just because it accepted responsibility, it was good because they acted responsibly. The incident lasted two days, and it was quickly corrected. Many other companies would ignore it for months, and a similar apology in that case would be feel far less sincere. It's okay to mess up if you quickly correct the issue or at least quickly recognize it and try to correct it. The problems arise when i…

Apologies mean nothing without a believable promise to not behave similarly in the future. Furthermore, "sorry" doesn't excuse all behaviors. Doing something shitty like closing someone's account without warning and without an appeal process is inexcusable.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#122

Post by teepo » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

My theory: Slack did this rough shot to get a deal signed with a major new client and to support the due dil.

Also note that all the major cloud providers in the US do not do business with embargoed countries. They all block IP from Iran, et al. to compute within the US, but allow it to compute within other geos, this extends to tech support, sales, etc.

I'm honestly surprised that Slack users within Iran could access the service running in US to begin with. In all likelihood they could only access edge servers located in other geos in APAC or the EU.

Look closely at everything Slack says in this message and others. "Enterprise Software" is tossed around a lot. They want to be the communications platform for the enterprise and have to meet these standards to compete with other offerings that exist today.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#123

Post by throw-far-away » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

hamandcheese wrote: post #71

tlb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

“If you were sorry you wouldn’t have done it to begin with” has also come up on several occasions in my personal life. Haven’t figured out how best to respond to that one.

There are a range of harms that are reasonably excusable and then those that are inexcusable. It's when people are excessively or inconsistently unreasonable that you're better off not associating with them and their BS. It's unreasonable to reason with an unreasonable person.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#124

Post by curiousgal » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #26

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…

I used Google Maps and most other google apps fine while in Iran. Youtube and some other sites are blocked, but that's actually from the Iran side. Of course these are all free services, I assume I could not have actually paid for any paid services. EDIT: I know that Google AppEngine and probably Cloud are blocked, because they provide foreign nation with "computing resources", but that's also its own different bucke…

I honestly don't see the point of blocking simple users because of a political conflict, i.e. between governments. One answer that jumps to mind is that those governments are merely a representative of those users but in the case of Iran, we know what happened when people elected their leaders, so it's kinda hypocritical from that regard to punish users because of a leader we placed.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#125

Post by dbg31415 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

ssnistfajen wrote: post #109

dbg31415 wrote: post #89

This disturbs me. So Slack is a communications platform. If we have an embargo against a country, we have to shut off any services we offer to that country? Including communications platforms. Doesn't seem like that will help improve things in that country, or help the people in that country communicate. I'm all for not sending a dictatorship steel or guns, but why would we cut off communications platforms? That seem…

Maybe KJU, Khamenei, and Raul Castro has a secret slack group for plotting USA's downfall. You never know! /s I'm betting that Slack only had to do this to comply with some dumb laws regarding sanctions because I am unable to see why anyone from these countries using civilian, commercial, non-sensitive services such as Slack would have any impact on sanction enforcement.

Nah, they're on WhatsApp.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#126

Post by hrktb » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:23 AM UTC

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 supposed to be that reassured ?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#127

Post by chx » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:24 AM UTC

Reports from the affected are a bit imprecise and often heated. Do we know whether Slack here banned based on IPs from the past and if so, do we know how long they keep that data?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#128

Post by dogecoinbase » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:35 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…

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 work within Slack in an engineering capacity who feel, frankly, betrayed by the organization. Slack advertises itself internally as an engineering-driven company and on the security side, has an incredibly elaborate system of internal controls that I have espoused emulations of during my consulting that, and I am being very specific without being too specific here, were bypassed to perform these account bans. Slack's security team was bypassed. Slack's internal controls were contravened. Slack has demonstrated that they can access every location you've ever logged in from and will cheerfully give that information up for the pleasure of the US Government without it even being required of them.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#129

Post by rootkea » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:40 AM UTC

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 possible.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#130

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:41 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.

I believe there are unapologizable offenses that reveal true intrinsic character character flaws that can't be regretted away, but this definitely isn't one of them.