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Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know t

Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead, they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile.

jwildeboer 8y ago
At least give them access to a downloadable archive of all their content and maybe inform other users that interacted with this user about alternative methods of contact.
SentientNo4 8y ago
Simple: it costs them money and resources to go through the process you described, whereas it costs them almost nothing to directly close the account and send an automated message.
- Juliate 8y ago
  I wouldn't call "reputation" nothing or less valuable than money.
  - user5994461 8y ago
    I've only ever seen one company actually have a "reputation" metrics mentioned in the employee onboarding or customer support and outages.
    - starbeast 8y ago
      The value of that intangible asset is called 'goodwill' and the market gives it a value. Worldcom had to slash around $80 billion dollars in lost 'goodwill'.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
> I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge fine. I don't know how that works given how Huawei is a Chinese company, but there you go. To clarify: private companies are not and should not be above the law.
- anthonys 8y ago
  No they aren't above the law. But to clarify, they gave a service to people/teams who maybe they shouldn't have. Did the people signing up/using Slack know that? Maybe. Who's responsible to ensure it's enforced? Slack.
  - ivanhoe 8y ago
    This is not about blocking accounts of people in Iran, which is a totally legit thing to do. This is about blocking someone who is of Iranian origin, but claims to live in Canada for years and has no business connections with Iran whatsoever. Probably it's some automatic filtering hitting a false positive, but question is how that works, what criteria they use to search for "suspicious" accounts? Have they been given the list of accounts by some US agency or they track and profile their users? There's a lot of confidential business info floating through Slack channels, so it's a huge deal for all of us if they data-mine on that in some way.
  - izacus 8y ago
    "maybe" shouldn't have. So not "certanly" shouldn't have, just "maybe"?
- AJ007 8y ago
  This is another strong case for open source software development along with open, publicly available, standards and protocols. This isn't about Slack, it isn't about US sanctions law. It is about any private entity creating closed sourced, remotely hosted software. Everyone knows that APIs can be pulled at any time (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Spying can be mandated whether it is the US government, China, or anyone else. As end users it is never clear what is going on behind the curtain. It is never certain the product will be here tomorrow - whatever the reason. No one would build a high rise where all of the elevators could suddenly vanish, yet we are increasingly putting the critical pieces of our businesses and our lives in the hands of entities that only need to flick a switch and everything instantly vanishes.
suddenstutter 8y ago
Its not a companies fault. Its governement.
- pm90 8y ago
  No it’s the companies fault. Export restrictions can’t be applied indiscriminately. Laws are open to interpretation and they have interpreted this law in letter not in spirit.
thinkloop 8y ago
I wonder if it's like being fired, they are concerned that you may fly off the handle with your last bit of time so they confiscate all your tools as quick as possible.
macspoofing 8y ago
>Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin How is that an 'obvious wrong'? That's how sanctions work. Sanctions are laws that prevent companies in one region from doing business with companies from another region. >Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead, they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile. That I agree with. Slack should do better. But doing better means doing more investigative work and you probably don't want to delegate that to your frontline tech support worker, so it means it's expensive and not particularly scalable.

jwildeboer 8y ago

At least give them access to a downloadable archive of all their content and maybe inform other users that interacted with this user about alternative methods of contact.

SentientNo4 8y ago

Simple: it costs them money and resources to go through the process you described, whereas it costs them almost nothing to directly close the account and send an automated message.

Juliate 8y ago
I wouldn't call "reputation" nothing or less valuable than money.
- user5994461 8y ago
  I've only ever seen one company actually have a "reputation" metrics mentioned in the employee onboarding or customer support and outages.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    The value of that intangible asset is called 'goodwill' and the market gives it a value. Worldcom had to slash around $80 billion dollars in lost 'goodwill'.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

> I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge fine. I don't know how that works given how Huawei is a Chinese company, but there you go. To clarify: private companies are not and should not be above the law.

anthonys 8y ago
No they aren't above the law. But to clarify, they gave a service to people/teams who maybe they shouldn't have. Did the people signing up/using Slack know that? Maybe. Who's responsible to ensure it's enforced? Slack.
- ivanhoe 8y ago
  This is not about blocking accounts of people in Iran, which is a totally legit thing to do. This is about blocking someone who is of Iranian origin, but claims to live in Canada for years and has no business connections with Iran whatsoever. Probably it's some automatic filtering hitting a false positive, but question is how that works, what criteria they use to search for "suspicious" accounts? Have they been given the list of accounts by some US agency or they track and profile their users? There's a lot of confidential business info floating through Slack channels, so it's a huge deal for all of us if they data-mine on that in some way.
- izacus 8y ago
  "maybe" shouldn't have. So not "certanly" shouldn't have, just "maybe"?
AJ007 8y ago
This is another strong case for open source software development along with open, publicly available, standards and protocols. This isn't about Slack, it isn't about US sanctions law. It is about any private entity creating closed sourced, remotely hosted software. Everyone knows that APIs can be pulled at any time (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Spying can be mandated whether it is the US government, China, or anyone else. As end users it is never clear what is going on behind the curtain. It is never certain the product will be here tomorrow - whatever the reason. No one would build a high rise where all of the elevators could suddenly vanish, yet we are increasingly putting the critical pieces of our businesses and our lives in the hands of entities that only need to flick a switch and everything instantly vanishes.

suddenstutter 8y ago

Its not a companies fault. Its governement.

pm90 8y ago
No it’s the companies fault. Export restrictions can’t be applied indiscriminately. Laws are open to interpretation and they have interpreted this law in letter not in spirit.

thinkloop 8y ago

I wonder if it's like being fired, they are concerned that you may fly off the handle with your last bit of time so they confiscate all your tools as quick as possible.

macspoofing 8y ago

>Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin How is that an 'obvious wrong'? That's how sanctions work. Sanctions are laws that prevent companies in one region from doing business with companies from another region. >Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead, they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile. That I agree with. Slack should do better. But doing better means doing more investigative work and you probably don't want to delegate that to your frontline tech support worker, so it means it's expensive and not particularly scalable.