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That's a 40x increase all at once with a very short grace period, it's bait-and-switch territory. If only 2.5% of targets pay the ransom, Slack breaks even on
by tux3 1y ago
That's a 40x increase all at once with a very short grace period, it's bait-and-switch territory.
If only 2.5% of targets pay the ransom, Slack breaks even on this racket, so in absence of any protection this strategy is most likely profitable for Slack.
This is something you pull if you want to squeeze in the short term, and don't mind losing customers.
- timeon 1y agoWas not obvious before but these days it is: choosing VC-backed service is very risky.
- scrollaway 1y agoSlack is not a VC backed service right now. It is owned in full by Salesforce. Now you can argue choosing a Salesforce product is not a good idea and that I agree with.
- Barbing 1y agoThanks for doing the math. Imagine being the analyst who was paid to optimize this or (infinitely worse?) the executive who demanded it.
- raxxorraxor 1y agoShould be enough for the state to take custody of their kids.
- dijit 1y agoWhat? No? Why?
- bluecheese452 1y agoThat is insane.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago> Imagine being the analyst who was paid to optimize this It's hard to imagine being GPT-4o.
- Simran-B 1y agoI'm pretty sure they want to lose all of the non-lucrative customers.
- Aurornis 1y agoSecond-hand anecdote: Someone I know who works for Slack made a comment a few years ago that the company regretted giving out so many free instances to different organizations years back. Apparently the number of free Slack instances that had grown very large and high traffic was significant enough that it couldn’t be completely ignored. I disagree with them giving such a short notice period, of course. However I’m not surprised to see them choosing to trim the free or highly discounted accounts at this stage.
- kmacdough 1y agoMaybe, but theres a real benefit to getting your tool in the hands of ambitious kids if you want to sustain a market share once those kids grow older. There's a reason Apple still gives pretty solid educational discounts even as the largest consumer hardware manufacturer.
- RealityVoid 1y agoIt's a chat app. How much traffic can there be? Just hobble the high bandwidth functionalities for non paying instances and be done with it. I find it quite hard to justify the way Slack is behaving.
- ceejayoz 1y agoIt's a "chat app" that includes large file uploads, video calls, and whatnot.
- quentindanjou 1y agoIts true but then again, they could provide tiers that restrict large file upload, video calls etc. I think most of the businesses using Slack are unlikely using their video call system (and more likely to use Zoom, Teams, Google Meet). Most organizations use Slack for its organized messaging system; maybe they should make plans that focus on that. They try to pack more and more features and realize that when their customers start using these, it costs them money.
- 1y ago