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Isn’t this a violation of Slack and Discord TOS? I think this guy did well, but as this tool grew more popular, Slack and Discord might pursue legal actions

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shafyy 4y ago
I had the same thought. If I remember correctly, one of Slack's paid features is that you can retain older chat archives. This kind of circumvents that. Now, I think it's a cool product and I hope that there will be no legal repercussions.
dinobones 4y ago
I think that's exactly why OP's idea will take off. Everyone is too scared to build a competitor. Airbnb started by spamming Craigslist with fake ads. Stripe started by accepting payments to a single bank account. Doing something shoddy/somewhat shady and not being afraid of the repercussions gets you ahead in startups. So what if OP breaks someone's "TOS", by the time they notice or OP's product gets big enough too care, he will likely have sufficient enough capital to fight them off. If he never gets that big, more power to him for something that makes him some beer money.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Stripe started by accepting payments to a single bank account. Where can I read more about that? It sounds fascinating..
  - smcn 4y ago
    https://read.first1000.co/p/-stripe https://read.first1000.co/p/-stripe This might be of some interest
    - languageserver 4y ago
      heck, that is probably the worst formatting I have ever read for an article
      - smcn 4y ago
        Too many emojis for my taste but they're interesting enough that I get over that hurdle. It does feel like someone trying to advertise to me on Twitter though.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  You will probably find there are a lot of people up for it. There is a whole black hat community out there trying to make a fast buck fast and loose. If anything this would be too pedestrian!
- hnbad 4y ago
  The problem with this approach is that it's high reward but also high risk. On the one end you have Airbnb spamming Craigslist (which at worst could have resulted in a cease & desist preventing future use of that marketing channel) and on the other end you have Theranos setting up a fake lab and producing fraudulent blood tests. "Be bold" and "fake it till you make it" are good slogans, but there is always a gradient between boldness and reckless negligence. "Take calculated risks" just doesn't have the same ring to it. If OP gets banned by Discord and Slack, their product is dead in the water and they'll have to deal with angry customers who paid for a service OP can no longer provide. This means if this really is a TOS violation, they'll either have to fly under the radar (which arguably failed when they hit HN front page) or they need to grow influential enough to enter negotiation with Slack and Discord to get a special deal.
- MangoCoffee 4y ago
  I think your analogy is flawed. Linen have dependencies (Slack/Discord). while Airbnb and Stripe are independent. There won't be enough money to fight them (Slack/Discord) if it stated in their TOS that they can turn off their services. Linen's situation is more like developing add-ons for Microsoft's Office until Microsoft decided to add features that does what your add-ons do for free.
chrismorgan 4y ago
I don’t think there would be any cause for Slack to complain for at least paid accounts. I glanced through the relevant terms, and there’s really only one even vaguely relevant topic, largely around competing with Slack. In their App Developer Policy <https://api.slack.com/developer-policy https://api.slack.com/developer-policy>: > As part of good business practices, Applications and developers are prohibited from: Circumventing Slack’s intended limitations (including pricing, features and access structures). You may not use the Slack API to replicate or compete with core products or services offered by Slack And in their API Terms of Service <https://slack.com/intl/en-au/terms-of-service/api https://slack.com/intl/en-au/terms-of-service/api>, which cites the app developer policy and then adds: > Further, you will not: … (C) access our APIs or documentation in order to replicate or compete with the Services If Slack spell out that there being no public mirror is an intended limitation, or if they offer a direct equivalent, then they could complain. And they could do for free accounts, which have a history limit that this would incidentally circumvent. But for paid accounts I don’t believe either of these are true, so if it were limited to working with paid accounts I’d say you’d be in the clear with Slack for now. Of course, you’re still subject to their caprice in changing their rules, implementing new features, or just booting you off their platform even without cause at their whim, and that’s a significant existential risk for building such a business. But I don’t think Slack would be particularly likely to boot them off, given that any hostile action on their part would be akin to claiming some degree of ownership of the data. The data belongs to the customer, and they should be able to do whatever they want with it without hindrance. Of course, such reasoning as this is only reasoning. If they did cut off such API access, they’d hardly be the first large company to shut the portcullis to support their own interests against their customers’; Twitter, for example.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
It's an interesting question... In my experience at a number of companies / assignments, Slack made its way into the business through "the back door", so to speak; development teams started using it without prior business approval - in a lot of companies, the use of unmonitored chat services was a no-no, so a lot of people were stuck on e-mail or a Microsoft project. But through "grassroots" movements, Slack was shimmied into these companies and took off, until the management was convinced to start paying for it. TL;DR I strongly believe Slack became popular through their users bending/breaking some rules. I also believe that the users have the rights to archive and republish their chat messages as they please. I don't believe a service that archives messages will cause too much overhead to Slack either. They may start charging for API access though, which is fair.
- hnbad 4y ago
  Slack became popular via community slacks, which the company always stated they were willing to tolerate but not interested in supporting. I don't think that qualifies as bending/breaking rules so much as repurposing. Slack still tolerates community slacks but has set precedent for setting hard limits on user counts, which has led to many community slacks migrating to Discord instead. If anything, Slack benefitted from community slacks until they outlived their usefulness and then Discord benefitted from the influx of new users. They definitely took notice at the time and added features new users had been used to from Slack.
jbirer 4y ago
He just needs to rebase to a country that doesn't really listen to US laws.
- akudha 4y ago
  How is this practical? especially for a tiny project like this?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shafyy 4y ago

I had the same thought. If I remember correctly, one of Slack's paid features is that you can retain older chat archives. This kind of circumvents that. Now, I think it's a cool product and I hope that there will be no legal repercussions.

dinobones 4y ago

I think that's exactly why OP's idea will take off. Everyone is too scared to build a competitor. Airbnb started by spamming Craigslist with fake ads. Stripe started by accepting payments to a single bank account. Doing something shoddy/somewhat shady and not being afraid of the repercussions gets you ahead in startups. So what if OP breaks someone's "TOS", by the time they notice or OP's product gets big enough too care, he will likely have sufficient enough capital to fight them off. If he never gets that big, more power to him for something that makes him some beer money.

onion2k 4y ago
Stripe started by accepting payments to a single bank account. Where can I read more about that? It sounds fascinating..
- smcn 4y ago
  https://read.first1000.co/p/-stripe https://read.first1000.co/p/-stripe This might be of some interest
  - languageserver 4y ago
    heck, that is probably the worst formatting I have ever read for an article
    - smcn 4y ago
      Too many emojis for my taste but they're interesting enough that I get over that hurdle. It does feel like someone trying to advertise to me on Twitter though.
quickthrower2 4y ago
You will probably find there are a lot of people up for it. There is a whole black hat community out there trying to make a fast buck fast and loose. If anything this would be too pedestrian!
hnbad 4y ago
The problem with this approach is that it's high reward but also high risk. On the one end you have Airbnb spamming Craigslist (which at worst could have resulted in a cease & desist preventing future use of that marketing channel) and on the other end you have Theranos setting up a fake lab and producing fraudulent blood tests. "Be bold" and "fake it till you make it" are good slogans, but there is always a gradient between boldness and reckless negligence. "Take calculated risks" just doesn't have the same ring to it. If OP gets banned by Discord and Slack, their product is dead in the water and they'll have to deal with angry customers who paid for a service OP can no longer provide. This means if this really is a TOS violation, they'll either have to fly under the radar (which arguably failed when they hit HN front page) or they need to grow influential enough to enter negotiation with Slack and Discord to get a special deal.
MangoCoffee 4y ago
I think your analogy is flawed. Linen have dependencies (Slack/Discord). while Airbnb and Stripe are independent. There won't be enough money to fight them (Slack/Discord) if it stated in their TOS that they can turn off their services. Linen's situation is more like developing add-ons for Microsoft's Office until Microsoft decided to add features that does what your add-ons do for free.

chrismorgan 4y ago

I don’t think there would be any cause for Slack to complain for at least paid accounts. I glanced through the relevant terms, and there’s really only one even vaguely relevant topic, largely around competing with Slack. In their App Developer Policy <https://api.slack.com/developer-policy https://api.slack.com/developer-policy>: > As part of good business practices, Applications and developers are prohibited from: Circumventing Slack’s intended limitations (including pricing, features and access structures). You may not use the Slack API to replicate or compete with core products or services offered by Slack And in their API Terms of Service <https://slack.com/intl/en-au/terms-of-service/api https://slack.com/intl/en-au/terms-of-service/api>, which cites the app developer policy and then adds: > Further, you will not: … (C) access our APIs or documentation in order to replicate or compete with the Services If Slack spell out that there being no public mirror is an intended limitation, or if they offer a direct equivalent, then they could complain. And they could do for free accounts, which have a history limit that this would incidentally circumvent. But for paid accounts I don’t believe either of these are true, so if it were limited to working with paid accounts I’d say you’d be in the clear with Slack for now. Of course, you’re still subject to their caprice in changing their rules, implementing new features, or just booting you off their platform even without cause at their whim, and that’s a significant existential risk for building such a business. But I don’t think Slack would be particularly likely to boot them off, given that any hostile action on their part would be akin to claiming some degree of ownership of the data. The data belongs to the customer, and they should be able to do whatever they want with it without hindrance. Of course, such reasoning as this is only reasoning. If they did cut off such API access, they’d hardly be the first large company to shut the portcullis to support their own interests against their customers’; Twitter, for example.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

It's an interesting question... In my experience at a number of companies / assignments, Slack made its way into the business through "the back door", so to speak; development teams started using it without prior business approval - in a lot of companies, the use of unmonitored chat services was a no-no, so a lot of people were stuck on e-mail or a Microsoft project. But through "grassroots" movements, Slack was shimmied into these companies and took off, until the management was convinced to start paying for it. TL;DR I strongly believe Slack became popular through their users bending/breaking some rules. I also believe that the users have the rights to archive and republish their chat messages as they please. I don't believe a service that archives messages will cause too much overhead to Slack either. They may start charging for API access though, which is fair.

hnbad 4y ago
Slack became popular via community slacks, which the company always stated they were willing to tolerate but not interested in supporting. I don't think that qualifies as bending/breaking rules so much as repurposing. Slack still tolerates community slacks but has set precedent for setting hard limits on user counts, which has led to many community slacks migrating to Discord instead. If anything, Slack benefitted from community slacks until they outlived their usefulness and then Discord benefitted from the influx of new users. They definitely took notice at the time and added features new users had been used to from Slack.

jbirer 4y ago

He just needs to rebase to a country that doesn't really listen to US laws.

akudha 4y ago
How is this practical? especially for a tiny project like this?