7 ms·

Slack Is Down

190 points by polyrand 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Insanity 2y ago
Came to post the same. The mobile client still seems to work for me though but the electron client is down. Edit: the mobile client loaded messages but also fails to send.
- PrayagS 2y ago
  It also seems like all integrations that use Slack webhooks are working. But the ones which are like a dedicated app are failing with the same `fatal_error` message.
clacker-o-matic 2y ago
All my apps are returning an auth:test fatal error: AuthorizeError: Failed to call auth.test API due to Failed to call auth.test due to fatal_error The slack app management page also seems down
JPKab 2y ago
My entire company is unable to access it. Good reminder that we need a backup real time messaging app.
- lebski88 2y ago
  > Good reminder that we need a backup real time messaging app. I'm quite enjoying the quiet. There's still video or email in an emergency.
- tomrod 2y ago
  HN and IRC! ;-)
clacker-o-matic 2y ago
Slack status reports that workflows are affected now (11:08 EST)
pz 2y ago
Purely coincidence but we just posted about emdash, our Slack/Zoom alternative on Shown HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184362 Check it out @ https://emdash.io https://emdash.io
- clacker-o-matic 2y ago
  oooh; i certainly will!
redwood 2y ago
Just went down for me
- simonasr 2y ago
  same
uutangohotel 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
coryfklein 2y ago
Minor thing that bugs the heck out of me: I can't login to Slack, it's a total outage for me, but on their status page [0] their copy says, "Something's not quite right." In reality, there are probably folks freaking out internally at Slack with their hair on fire, and probably tens of thousands of people are locked out of their business comms. Saying "something is not quite right" trivializes and downplays the severity. No! Something like, "We have a real problem" would be much more appropriate and not pretending like "oh it's no biggie, we'll take a look later." [0] https://slack-status.com https://slack-status.com
- NameError 2y ago
  It seems that Slack being fully down and unusable only reaches the "incident" category on their scale - I'd hate to see what counts as "outage"
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    Yeah, and the incident details indicate call it "degraded functionality" when it seems broken for everyone across the board. Desktop app, website and mobile app all non-functional.
    - xp84 2y ago
      Oddly, my mobile app still has me logged in and seems to work, but the desktop app switched to its stupid 'oopsy daisy, something not quite right' screen on its own.
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        Can you send messages or see anyone online?
  - erickhill 2y ago
    I think it's AWS or something similar related. Seems to be specific to some but not all locations.
revicon 2y ago
Our company of >100 people is all remote and all our internal comms are through Slack. The silence is deafening, surprisingly so, when Slack goes down like this. It happens so rarely (to the Slack team's credit), but when it does, it feels just like when the power unexpectedly goes out. We totally forget how much we rely on it until it disappears.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Consider a Signal group or some sort of backup comms channel. Edit: Email can have latency, which is why I did not recommend it.
  - revicon 2y ago
    Email is always there as a backup, but no one in the company uses it anymore, to the point where we have to remind people to check it incase an external vendor reaches out. Slack has provided so much additional functionality that trying to cram day to day working back into email just doesn't work anymore.
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    Email
- xp84 2y ago
  I had to pull everyone I could into newly created Gchat "Spaces" (Did anyone else just discover that even existed? I didn't know about it) -- though it's hard to get the message out to go there when normally that's the kind of thing I'd tag @channel in #general. And my other go-to communication method is grabbing people's phone numbers from their slack profile. D'oh!
SteveNuts 2y ago
> Our investigation is still in progress with regard to deprecated functionality for Slack features such as workflows, threads, sending messages and API-related features. I'm not sure what their status page is talking about, is sending messages a deprecated slack feature?
- brookst 2y ago
  Pretty sure that's a typo for "degraded". But it's funny.
  - hunter2_ 2y ago
    And someone, somewhere, has further mangled "deprecated" into "depreciated" when reading it aloud, I'm fairly certain.
    - brookst 2y ago
      What do you mean messaging has been depressed?
    - tomrod 2y ago
      Me! I'm the notorious mangler! Just kidding. But there was a sizable fraction of time where I really hadn't heard the word "deprecated" and read it mentally as "depreciated" like an asset.
- alexthehurst 2y ago
  Their status updates look clearly like AI-generated blurbs saying the same thing with varied phrasing, hour after hour. Thanks for the slop? I know writing status page updates is annoying, but “a human is paying attention to this” is the specific thing that status updates are trying to convey, so trying to get info from this page felt dispiriting today. Edit: this would also explain why some details of the updates were nonsensical.
- wlonkly 2y ago
  Yes, it's been replaced by an LLM.
DebtDeflation 2y ago
I can't access the desktop or web versions but my phone app still seems to be working, at least intermittently.
minraws 2y ago
I honestly thought I took down Slack when I posted a little too long message only to realize it went down globally.
codemac 2y ago
You can tell Teams, gchat, discord, and other have taken away from Slack's dominance. This isn't even frontpage.
- cachecrab 2y ago
  I think this post could have improved visibility by prepending "Tell HN" to the title. That's what my eyes were searching for on the front page.
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  It's interesting to me that it has so many points (140) and comments (31) and it's still not on the front page.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Hopefully slack will stay down long enough for me to get in a few good ski runs ;)
koito17 2y ago
Everything seemed fine at around 9:00 AM PST (UTC-8). A few minutes later, I made the mistake of reloading Slack after a few messages began failing to send. Haven't been able to access my company's Slack workspace since. At the time of writing this post, it's now 11:00 AM PST. Emailed my manager explaining the situation. Hopefully they can understand. Also plan to ask others about Slack alternative for situations like this. For now, we are relaying things through e-mail.
niutech 2y ago
This is another remainder that crucial business communication should be based on self-hosted solutions to be independent on third-parties and for privacy reasons. There are good and even more lightweight open source Slack alternatives: Nextcloud Talk, Mattermost, Zulip, Element.io, Jami, to name a few. Relying on a third-party provider is asking for trouble. Plus giving away your private business conversations to feed AI and NSA is another thing.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  I bet 90% of those installations are not self-hosted, they are using a hosting provider anyway.
- amai 2y ago
  Another alternative is https://www.rocket.chat/ https://www.rocket.chat/ .
judahmeek 2y ago
Slack is back up for me.
paulddraper 2y ago
PSA as a stopgap, mobile has worked for me for most of the day. Will be an interesting post mortem to read...
clacker-o-matic 2y ago
Some slack app functionality seems to be back with commands and link previews working but message events still seem to be broken
progbits 2y ago
Four hours and still broken for me. Not sure if we will get a postmortem but very curious what went wrong. Good luck to SREs over there! (I know, they would say luck is not a strategy)
- shkkmo 2y ago
  It must have been one hell of a morning. It took them 5 hours to identify the cause and everything is still broken for me.
jimmyl02 2y ago
Based on the status report, it seems like it was related to a database disaster and mention recovering shards. Publicly they say they are using vitess[0] so I wonder if there was some issues there. I wonder if there will be a more detailed post-mortem, would be super interesting to learn more! [0] https://slack.engineering/scaling-datastores-at-slack-with-vitess/ https://slack.engineering/scaling-datastores-at-slack-with-v...

190 points by polyrand 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Came to post the same. The mobile client still seems to work for me though but the electron client is down. Edit: the mobile client loaded messages but also fails to send.

PrayagS 2y ago
It also seems like all integrations that use Slack webhooks are working. But the ones which are like a dedicated app are failing with the same `fatal_error` message.

clacker-o-matic 2y ago

All my apps are returning an auth:test fatal error: AuthorizeError: Failed to call auth.test API due to Failed to call auth.test due to fatal_error The slack app management page also seems down

JPKab 2y ago

My entire company is unable to access it. Good reminder that we need a backup real time messaging app.

lebski88 2y ago
> Good reminder that we need a backup real time messaging app. I'm quite enjoying the quiet. There's still video or email in an emergency.
tomrod 2y ago
HN and IRC! ;-)

clacker-o-matic 2y ago

Slack status reports that workflows are affected now (11:08 EST)

pz 2y ago

Purely coincidence but we just posted about emdash, our Slack/Zoom alternative on Shown HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184362 Check it out @ https://emdash.io https://emdash.io

clacker-o-matic 2y ago
oooh; i certainly will!

redwood 2y ago

Just went down for me

simonasr 2y ago
same

uutangohotel 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

coryfklein 2y ago

Minor thing that bugs the heck out of me: I can't login to Slack, it's a total outage for me, but on their status page [0] their copy says, "Something's not quite right." In reality, there are probably folks freaking out internally at Slack with their hair on fire, and probably tens of thousands of people are locked out of their business comms. Saying "something is not quite right" trivializes and downplays the severity. No! Something like, "We have a real problem" would be much more appropriate and not pretending like "oh it's no biggie, we'll take a look later." [0] https://slack-status.com https://slack-status.com

NameError 2y ago
It seems that Slack being fully down and unusable only reaches the "incident" category on their scale - I'd hate to see what counts as "outage"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shkkmo 2y ago
  Yeah, and the incident details indicate call it "degraded functionality" when it seems broken for everyone across the board. Desktop app, website and mobile app all non-functional.
  - xp84 2y ago
    Oddly, my mobile app still has me logged in and seems to work, but the desktop app switched to its stupid 'oopsy daisy, something not quite right' screen on its own.
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      Can you send messages or see anyone online?
- erickhill 2y ago
  I think it's AWS or something similar related. Seems to be specific to some but not all locations.

revicon 2y ago

Our company of >100 people is all remote and all our internal comms are through Slack. The silence is deafening, surprisingly so, when Slack goes down like this. It happens so rarely (to the Slack team's credit), but when it does, it feels just like when the power unexpectedly goes out. We totally forget how much we rely on it until it disappears.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Consider a Signal group or some sort of backup comms channel. Edit: Email can have latency, which is why I did not recommend it.
- revicon 2y ago
  Email is always there as a backup, but no one in the company uses it anymore, to the point where we have to remind people to check it incase an external vendor reaches out. Slack has provided so much additional functionality that trying to cram day to day working back into email just doesn't work anymore.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  Email
xp84 2y ago
I had to pull everyone I could into newly created Gchat "Spaces" (Did anyone else just discover that even existed? I didn't know about it) -- though it's hard to get the message out to go there when normally that's the kind of thing I'd tag @channel in #general. And my other go-to communication method is grabbing people's phone numbers from their slack profile. D'oh!

SteveNuts 2y ago

> Our investigation is still in progress with regard to deprecated functionality for Slack features such as workflows, threads, sending messages and API-related features. I'm not sure what their status page is talking about, is sending messages a deprecated slack feature?

brookst 2y ago
Pretty sure that's a typo for "degraded". But it's funny.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  And someone, somewhere, has further mangled "deprecated" into "depreciated" when reading it aloud, I'm fairly certain.
  - brookst 2y ago
    What do you mean messaging has been depressed?
  - tomrod 2y ago
    Me! I'm the notorious mangler! Just kidding. But there was a sizable fraction of time where I really hadn't heard the word "deprecated" and read it mentally as "depreciated" like an asset.
alexthehurst 2y ago
Their status updates look clearly like AI-generated blurbs saying the same thing with varied phrasing, hour after hour. Thanks for the slop? I know writing status page updates is annoying, but “a human is paying attention to this” is the specific thing that status updates are trying to convey, so trying to get info from this page felt dispiriting today. Edit: this would also explain why some details of the updates were nonsensical.
wlonkly 2y ago
Yes, it's been replaced by an LLM.

DebtDeflation 2y ago

I can't access the desktop or web versions but my phone app still seems to be working, at least intermittently.

minraws 2y ago

I honestly thought I took down Slack when I posted a little too long message only to realize it went down globally.

codemac 2y ago

You can tell Teams, gchat, discord, and other have taken away from Slack's dominance. This isn't even frontpage.

cachecrab 2y ago
I think this post could have improved visibility by prepending "Tell HN" to the title. That's what my eyes were searching for on the front page.
booleandilemma 2y ago
It's interesting to me that it has so many points (140) and comments (31) and it's still not on the front page.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Hopefully slack will stay down long enough for me to get in a few good ski runs ;)

koito17 2y ago

Everything seemed fine at around 9:00 AM PST (UTC-8). A few minutes later, I made the mistake of reloading Slack after a few messages began failing to send. Haven't been able to access my company's Slack workspace since. At the time of writing this post, it's now 11:00 AM PST. Emailed my manager explaining the situation. Hopefully they can understand. Also plan to ask others about Slack alternative for situations like this. For now, we are relaying things through e-mail.

niutech 2y ago

This is another remainder that crucial business communication should be based on self-hosted solutions to be independent on third-parties and for privacy reasons. There are good and even more lightweight open source Slack alternatives: Nextcloud Talk, Mattermost, Zulip, Element.io, Jami, to name a few. Relying on a third-party provider is asking for trouble. Plus giving away your private business conversations to feed AI and NSA is another thing.

paulddraper 2y ago
I bet 90% of those installations are not self-hosted, they are using a hosting provider anyway.
amai 2y ago
Another alternative is https://www.rocket.chat/ https://www.rocket.chat/ .

judahmeek 2y ago

Slack is back up for me.

paulddraper 2y ago

PSA as a stopgap, mobile has worked for me for most of the day. Will be an interesting post mortem to read...

clacker-o-matic 2y ago

Some slack app functionality seems to be back with commands and link previews working but message events still seem to be broken

progbits 2y ago

Four hours and still broken for me. Not sure if we will get a postmortem but very curious what went wrong. Good luck to SREs over there! (I know, they would say luck is not a strategy)

shkkmo 2y ago
It must have been one hell of a morning. It took them 5 hours to identify the cause and everything is still broken for me.

jimmyl02 2y ago

Based on the status report, it seems like it was related to a database disaster and mention recovering shards. Publicly they say they are using vitess[0] so I wonder if there was some issues there. I wonder if there will be a more detailed post-mortem, would be super interesting to learn more! [0] https://slack.engineering/scaling-datastores-at-slack-with-vitess/ https://slack.engineering/scaling-datastores-at-slack-with-v...