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Slack obviously didn't care about the problem until it started causing them PR issues, now that they're doing the standard Social Media corporate damage control

Slack obviously didn't care about the problem until it started causing them PR issues, now that they're doing the standard Social Media corporate damage control we have to hold any criticism of the issue and their response? How many other clients have they done this to that haven't gone gone public or created a PR problem for $27bn Slack?

dang 1y ago
The question is at what point the community response stops being beneficial and starts being harmful to the community itself. I'd say this thread being high on HN's frontpage for many hours* has been beneficial. In addition to calling attention to Hack Club's predicament (and who doesn't love Hack Club?!), it gave a chance for many HN members to post their own relevant experiences, which it turned out there were a lot of—surprisingly many. But in the later stage of this process, when the thread has basically done its job, drawn attention and generated a response, I think it's harmful to escalate even further and get into a tar-and-feather treatment of poor sods who wander in to offer a "sorry" or "we'll fix it". The dynamic at that point goes from "let's rally together and help these awesome kids, plus hey, something similar happened to us" to something darker and meaner. The former is good for this community, the latter is bad for it. My point is that we should assess this based on how it affects us. That's handy, because that's information we can access, whereas we can't actually peer into $BigCo to find out whether what happened was a regrettable mistake or a nefarious grab they got caught at. As long as I'm going on about this I want to repeat what I said in the cousin comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45293388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45293388): the distinctive quality of internet indignation is unprocessed, opportunistic rage: unprocessed because it is pre-existing in a person (<-- and we all have this) for whatever original reasons that haven't been metabolized yet; opportunistic because it waits for justifiable occasions to lash out, and then lashes out with vengeance. This is not a great way to handle one's rage—it's a recipe for repetition instead of growth. How do I know that? I know it by self-observation, and I believe that anyone who wants to can know it by self-observation. It's particularly important to know this in a group context. When a group joins together to vent rage—because an occasion justifies it, even though the driver in each person may be very different—that's when a group turns into a mob. This happens easily because it happens without awareness and no one intends it. This is when we become our ugliest, so we should pay attention to signs of it in ourselves and in our groups, and learn to respond differently. Not easy, of course, but a good use to put an internet forum to! * something, btw, that the community corrected us about - we initially downweighted the thread, which was our mistake. Fortunately we like getting corrected by the community, so it was an easy fix.
- mlyle 1y ago
  I think there's a reasonable question about whether this was really an accident or something deliberate that they walked away from after bad PR. Fixing the immediate problem is only step one. It's reasonable to ask for accountability and that they tell us about what they're changing going forward.
  - dang 1y ago
    I don't know about "accountability" - that word tends to get weaponized, and I'm not sure who is accountable to internet commenters or why we internet commenters feel they are accountable to us. But of course it's fine to ask what happened, what will be changed, etc. That's orthogonal to the rage thing though.
    - mlyle 1y ago
      Well, e.g. I am at a nonprofit using Slack and would rather not get rugpulled in the future. So I'm particularly interested in any evidence that Slack can give that this was an isolated, unintentional circumstance and won't happen again.
      - dang 1y ago
        Absolutely, and I see nothing wrong with that at all. My issue is the tar-and-feather thing.
        simoncion 1y ago
        > My issue is the tar-and-feather thing. From what I can tell the "tar-and-feather thing" is outrage directed at Slack and its CXOs, rather than the poor guy who happens to be reposting a message from the CPO. Please don't let your moderator's concern for injury to individual people blind you to the fact that the outrage triggered by outrageous conduct is directed at the outrageous company and its officers, rather than at individual folks who aren't in a position with any real power.

dang 1y ago

The question is at what point the community response stops being beneficial and starts being harmful to the community itself. I'd say this thread being high on HN's frontpage for many hours* has been beneficial. In addition to calling attention to Hack Club's predicament (and who doesn't love Hack Club?!), it gave a chance for many HN members to post their own relevant experiences, which it turned out there were a lot of—surprisingly many. But in the later stage of this process, when the thread has basically done its job, drawn attention and generated a response, I think it's harmful to escalate even further and get into a tar-and-feather treatment of poor sods who wander in to offer a "sorry" or "we'll fix it". The dynamic at that point goes from "let's rally together and help these awesome kids, plus hey, something similar happened to us" to something darker and meaner. The former is good for this community, the latter is bad for it. My point is that we should assess this based on how it affects us. That's handy, because that's information we can access, whereas we can't actually peer into $BigCo to find out whether what happened was a regrettable mistake or a nefarious grab they got caught at. As long as I'm going on about this I want to repeat what I said in the cousin comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45293388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45293388): the distinctive quality of internet indignation is unprocessed, opportunistic rage: unprocessed because it is pre-existing in a person (<-- and we all have this) for whatever original reasons that haven't been metabolized yet; opportunistic because it waits for justifiable occasions to lash out, and then lashes out with vengeance. This is not a great way to handle one's rage—it's a recipe for repetition instead of growth. How do I know that? I know it by self-observation, and I believe that anyone who wants to can know it by self-observation. It's particularly important to know this in a group context. When a group joins together to vent rage—because an occasion justifies it, even though the driver in each person may be very different—that's when a group turns into a mob. This happens easily because it happens without awareness and no one intends it. This is when we become our ugliest, so we should pay attention to signs of it in ourselves and in our groups, and learn to respond differently. Not easy, of course, but a good use to put an internet forum to! * something, btw, that the community corrected us about - we initially downweighted the thread, which was our mistake. Fortunately we like getting corrected by the community, so it was an easy fix.

mlyle 1y ago
I think there's a reasonable question about whether this was really an accident or something deliberate that they walked away from after bad PR. Fixing the immediate problem is only step one. It's reasonable to ask for accountability and that they tell us about what they're changing going forward.
- dang 1y ago
  I don't know about "accountability" - that word tends to get weaponized, and I'm not sure who is accountable to internet commenters or why we internet commenters feel they are accountable to us. But of course it's fine to ask what happened, what will be changed, etc. That's orthogonal to the rage thing though.
  - mlyle 1y ago
    Well, e.g. I am at a nonprofit using Slack and would rather not get rugpulled in the future. So I'm particularly interested in any evidence that Slack can give that this was an isolated, unintentional circumstance and won't happen again.
    - dang 1y ago
      Absolutely, and I see nothing wrong with that at all. My issue is the tar-and-feather thing.
      - simoncion 1y ago
        > My issue is the tar-and-feather thing. From what I can tell the "tar-and-feather thing" is outrage directed at Slack and its CXOs, rather than the poor guy who happens to be reposting a message from the CPO. Please don't let your moderator's concern for injury to individual people blind you to the fact that the outrage triggered by outrageous conduct is directed at the outrageous company and its officers, rather than at individual folks who aren't in a position with any real power.