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>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, Slac
by nimbius 8y ago
>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 clearly possess enough information about the nationality of your users to block them based on it, which was your intent. You backpedaled when people who were not the target nationality began to complain.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- martincmartin 8y agoI'm Canadian, but live in Boston. My IP address shows where I live, not my nationality.
- abrowne 8y agoI was in London last month but that doesn't make me British.
- p1esk 8y agoNo, they blocked users based on location. I'm currently located in California, and this has nothing to do with my nationality.
- aervaertaera 8y agoExpats comprise less than 1% of the global population, and I doubt the number of international tourists at any given time pushes that percentage much higher. Use a VPN I guess, or better yet ditch Slack.
- dang 8y agoLikely a much higher percentage of Slack users though.
- briandear 8y agoNonsense. Much of Silicon Valley consists of foreigners, yet they didn’t block those users — a significant part of their user base ; thus the theory of ethnic or nationality blocking makes zero logical sense.
- fogetti 8y agoNo. It's the exact opposite. The fact that Californian IP-s were not targeted makes it pretty clear that US nationals were not targeted. While other nationals were. And it also proves that Slack engineers are dumb as f@ck.
- dang 8y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines. We ban accounts that keep doing that, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop doing that, we'd all appreciate it.
- briandear 8y agoIP != nationality or ethnicity.
- DonHopkins 8y agoYou gotta wait for IPV7 where your DNA sequence is your IP address, so they can block you and all your descendants.
- cyphar 8y ago> So, you blocked users based on their nationality. Where you are currently located or resident is effectively unrelated to your nationality (unless you were born a citizen of your country and have never left it, not even for a vacation). This comment by Slack was in response to several (fairly overblown) comments that they were racially targeting users ("Slack bans Iranian in Canada"), when in fact they were disabling accounts of people who have used Slack from an embargoed country at some point. To be clear, this is still bad, just not "blocking users based on their nationality". All of the outrage was over expats (or travellers) being blocked.