9 ms·

Slack's New Arbitration Policy

193 points by etjossem 12y ago

andy_ppp 12y ago
Meh. American government/supreme court are the ones who removed your rights. Slack is a corporation and should try to (within the law) remove as many of your rights as possible to protect investors and shareholders. If you don't like it, you know what to do. Re: Slack. It looks very nice but it's not very difficult to copy it's product as yet, it's USP as with most of these things is timing. I would suggest there must be a few competitors that you can replace it with already?
- TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  And their customers should do anything in their power to protect the interests of their own shareholders. That includes publicly complaining in hopes that the negative publicity will force Slack to change their terms. Even if you accept that corporations must disregard ethics and legality and act solely to maximize the interests of their shareholders, that doesn't that you can't complain about their actions.
leoh 12y ago
Is there a way for a user to know if their conversations are being logged for compliance?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- courtewing 12y ago
  The post says that compliance is disabled by default and that all users will be notified via slack itself if it were to be enabled for your organization.
- jn 12y ago
  The feature is opt-in, requires a somewhat formal process to turn on, and all users will be notified "via Slack that the feature is active and that their private messages are subject to export". They don't make it clear if it'll be made sufficiently obvious to a new user who joins after it's turned on, but I'd guess so. Also quite nice that "Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled"
mark212 12y ago
Yet another company that is opting out of complying with any legal system by forcing an arbitration clause on its customers. I switched from Hipchat when it changed its TOS to include mandatory arbitration and now it looks like I'll have to ditch Slack, too. Pity. It's a good service. (kind of hilariously, the arbitration provisions are not well drafted and are almost certainly unenforceable.)
- AlexandrB 12y ago
  Kind of a two-faced approach: - please trust us with your data - you have no recourse if we do screw up though
- wdewind 12y ago
  > opting out of complying with any legal system by forcing an arbitration clause on its customers. I don't fully understand the context. Can you explain the arbitration clause they are forcing? Edit: Found this, also on the front page right now: https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar...
- MCRed 12y ago
  Companies often choose arbitration when doing agreements between themselves, even large companies. The reason for this is, if, say, Nike and Apple did a deal and it went sour enough to have a lawsuit, they can resolve it much more quickly and cheaply than if they had to go to court. The US court system is very slow, and requires significant resources in terms of lawyers that are not required with arbitration. This should also be to the benefit of individuals as well, as the bar for suing a company as a consumer is much higher than picking a mutually agreed arbiter and getting the case heard. IF the clause is fair (e.g.: mutually agreed arbiter certified by a national arbiter certification organization) then I tend to see these clauses as consumer friendly.
  - gnopgnip 12y ago
    Without the clause, arbitration is still available if it is agreed by both parties. In practice the arbiters that do not side with the companies are not chosen again in the future.
1123581321 12y ago
I think that is a reasonable approach. The question my days working on NASD (FINRA) compliance have trained me to ask is how Slack controls employee and vendor write access to the audit log. I now work in a nearly regulation-free environment and we are happy users of Slack, so I'm just asking out of curiosity.
freshflowers 12y ago
It's a business tool, paid for by the employer. You shouldn't expect anything you do on there to remain private, just like you should expect your company mailbox to be private.
- etjossem 12y ago
  To be fair, the features in question are called "private groups" and "direct messages." There's bound to be some expectation that they are private and/or one-to-one.
  - apetresc 12y ago
    Only for the technically naive. Anyone who understands that e-mailing a colleague within your company's email server can be read by someone with the appropriate admin privileges, will also understand that a "direct message" on Slack is still being stored on Slack servers, not going P2P.
  - varikin 12y ago
    Would you expect emails via company mail servers from yourself to a coworker to be private? How about chats using some intranet based tool like MS Lync? Private and direct messages within a company should be thought of as not involving your coworkers, but IT and legal a might be monitoring.
    - etjossem 12y ago
      You, apetresc, and I are all unusual users - we're thinking about this in terms of network connections. Our first instinct is to figure out which parties in the chain could have stored a copy of the message. The typical user will probably just rely on clues like "private" or "direct" and make assumptions from there. The privacy level of these features can and will be misinterpreted. Read a few legal cases where employee communications are exhibited; you'd be surprised what people say on internal platforms.
      - goatforce5 12y ago
danielrhodes 12y ago
Compared to Hipchat, Slack has handled this compliance issue much better. I am personally uncomfortable with the idea of managers seeing employees communications, and Hipchat didn't put any consideration into this when they released that feature. Slack on the other hand seems quite aware of this issue and done things which make me much more comfortable, at least short-term. It goes to show what careful and empathetic product thinking can do to enhance your customer's experience.
- getsat 12y ago
  What is the difference between the situations? All I remember of HipChat's change was the same thing: conversations would only be logged moving forward after a particular date (rather than a switch being flipped).
  - danielrhodes 12y ago
    It was my understanding that HipChat would make private logs easily available to any administrator of the company account in the same way that public chat logs were available. It was also made clear that this was not something which could be disabled, otherwise impeded, or a user would be notified of. (somebody correct me on this if things are different) On Slack, from what they describe, the feature is only available with a certain type of account, you can only export logs in bulk (i.e. it's not something easy to do, it has been made for a specific purpose), and employees will be notified if the feature is enabled/used.
- koopajah 12y ago
  You could say they just learnt from the Hipchat announcement and remebered to address the issue head-on which makes it seem like they really care. But in the end the problem is exactly the same and your company will now have access to whatever you write including private chats. Personally that means I'll ensure to avoid private chat on Slack and use external tools again on top of everything I already use which is clearly annoying.
- mrjatx 12y ago
  It is absolutely ridiculous to be uncomfortable with managers seeing employee communications. First off, any time you log in to a machine at most corporations you're told that ALL network activities are monitored. It's not a joke. They are monitored. Every packet you send out and every packet you receive CAN BE RETRIEVED. This isn't new. I'm 30 and have seen this since I was in high school. I'm sure older folk have seen it for even longer. Next off, you are owed NO privacy on services that your company is paying for for interoffice communication. You never have been. The fact that people bitched and moaned over Hipchat allowing history to be viewed is just ignorant and stupid. You know why managers have the ability to view these things? Harassment. Sexual, physical, altercations, etc. If your company has more than 5 people these things WILL come up and the INABILITY to retrieve this data is BAD. We have ALWAYS been able to retrieve this data via XMPP (Openfire), MSOffice Communicator/Lync, etc. This is NOT some mind blowing new development.
famousactress 12y ago
Sounds fine to me, but this has me curious: "In addition, Compliance Exports may include the edit history for messages that team members have edited as well as messages that team members have marked for deletion." That makes me curious whether "deleting" a message actually deletes the data, in any circumstances.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  If they're archiving everything including edits, then no.
  - bsimpson 12y ago
    It's possible that they only log edits/deletes for enterprise customers with this feature enabled.
- tptacek 12y ago
  If they're complying with e.g. FINRA, then they can't delete messages; they're required to provide a high-fidelity export.
  - famousactress 12y ago
    Oh, sorry.. I understand that. My real question was for those of us on standard plans is hard-deletion a thing, and has it ever been in the past. In fact, even for folks on plans this covers it's not clear how much of this is "backwards compatible" with regard to data and conversations in Slack prior to these terms. [Edit: actually I see now "Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled" so strike the second paragraph.]
deleted 12y ago
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skrebbel 12y ago
Why not just make two policies: one for bigcorps where there is a big (but friendly) "your boss can read your messages and we'll tell you when it happens" at first sign up, and one for normal, sane, organizations where the old TOS simply remains?
- aspir 12y ago
  That's almost assuredly what's happening in practice. Large companies/orders have the leeway to reasonably negotiate with Slack. In cases like that, the standard policies set the framework for where that negotiation begins.
- ben336 12y ago
  Thats basically what they described isn't it? This compliance export feature is the only thing that allows reading private messages, and it is disabled by default and requires significant hoop-jumping to enable. So for most companies the original privacy policy will apply effectively.
eli 12y ago
I personally would feel very uncomfortable reading any employee messages... BUT here's why I think it's OK in principle to have the ability to snoop enterprise IM: we require everyone to use this chat system. It's part of your job to be on it and work is conducted over it, so we have some plausible responsibility in making sure it's being used properly and that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I'm solidly against reading employee's personal email or gchat or IRC messages even though I think legally we probably could.
- jonstewart 12y ago
  In the US, document discovery for litigation typically falls on the defendant. So a company that's being sued is required under the law to produce relevant business records and communications. If it's hard to access such "documents" en masse and export them for legal review, then businesses which must deal with nontrivial litigation requirements (the threshold is often right around the $1B/annual revenue mark) will not use the system. In the EU, things are a bit different and employees have a limited right to privacy when using corporate systems. Not so much in the US, though.
aurora72 12y ago
Nothing's indispensible, particularly on the Internet. So why complain? Just go and find another environment. If you can't, build one. I used to complain about Delicious and after a while I stopped complaining and decided to use another service. As simple as that.
- javajosh 12y ago
  > why complain Because it offers a non-zero chance of the best outcome: a low cost, high benefit outcome where the world changes to fall in line with your expectations. If you do not say anything then the world has little chance of changing. It is a rational result of cost benefit analysis. (Consider that moving to another service is costly, and building a new one more costly still.) Additionally, I would point out that complaining about things that we don't like is a universal human trait, which you yourself demonstrate. :)
  - aurora72 12y ago
    Hey dude I'm on your side on this issue, I wholeheartedly see everything you say. By saying "why complain" my target was those dictatorship-practising web instances and the thing is to remind them that nothing's irreplecable, particularly on the Internet.
- joshu 12y ago
  Yeah, me too.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
That's capitalism for you.
davidu 12y ago
Lawsuits are incredibly painful. The emotional and time tax to be in one, regardless of what side you are on, is immense. I hear what this guy is saying. However, having been in three lawsuits, one of which I initiated, I would do the same thing as Slack. I would generally try to do anything reasonable I could to avoid a lawsuit. Arbitration or mediation (very different things) is almost always required anyways, by the courts, if you file a lawsuit. They make you try. At least they try to force a mediator. If you force arbitration, it's the same thing as forcing a lawsuit and would result in my immediate desire to resolve your issue without continued legal maneuvers. Anecdotally, and as I think most litigation attorneys would tell you -- People settle lawsuits because they are either out of time, or money. They almost never settle because they think they've lost the case. The merits of the case rarely matter once you are knee-deep in the litigation, but the toll a lawsuit takes does factor into a settlement decision quite often.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
debacle 12y ago
It's hard to justify not putting a mandatory arbitration clause into a contract, even if it is unethical. It's an incredible boon for companies and most users don't appreciate what they're losing.
- ben336 12y ago
  I'm always worried when I see sentences with the structure "It's hard to justify [doing/not doing] X even if it's [unethical/illegal]". What type of justification do you need?
  - debacle 12y ago
    Why are you worried? From the suits' perspective: 1. Arbitration is going to potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line if there's a legal issue. 2. Arbitration incredibly favors the company over the customer. 3. Most customers don't understand the value of their right to civil action. So while an arbitration clause is, in my mind, equivalent to telling your customers you don't actually care about being reliable, many companies are putting them into place just because they can.
    - mark212 12y ago
      #1 is false. Ask Google or Apple or JPMorgan Chase -- who get sued frequently, yet don't bother with arb clauses #2 is true in most instances, but in order to find out you have to actually go through the entire arbitration and pay your lawyers' bills #3 is very true, but that only adds to the idea that it's unethical. Companies put them in because the corporate defense bar thinks this is the new hotness -- and few of those folks have ever actually litigated any of these clauses.
    - ben336 12y ago
      I worry when people brush aside ethics concerns without deep concern about the consequences. I'm not arguing for or against arbitration, I'm not well enough informed. I'm arguing against claiming you have to take an action you believe to be unethical simply because of the gain involved.
anonbanker 12y ago
What's the problem? Send these guys a private offer to arbitrate, according to your terms. Put your concerns on an affidavit concluded with your offer, and give them an opportunity to respond within 10-15 days. If they go silent (they will), send a notice of default next, and then file your lawsuit in civil court. You will have satisfied the private arbitration clause (arbitration went nowhere), and with your options exhausted, you now must file in court. Source: I'm an ex aequo et bono arbitrator.
- lanstein 12y ago
  To say nothing of the fact that large companies are not agreeing to these terms, they will have custom MSAs which dictate jurisdiction, etc.
- function_seven 12y ago
  I may be a bit dense, but your comment doesn't seem to relate to the article I just read. Is this the wrong thread or am I missing something? EDIT: I have to be missing something. Half the comments here talk about arbitration, but that word doesn't appear once in the blog post. Was it edited?
  - etjossem 12y ago
    The changes to the Terms of Service (linked from the blog post) include a new binding arbitration clause.
  - slig 12y ago
    Looks like another thread was merged here.
  - thetrumanshow 12y ago
    Yes. If you Google "slack ycombinator", you'll see the original title in the results (as of 12:26 PST). Edit: also, as another commenter said, it was merged.
  - mbreese 12y ago
    You're not missing anything. Two posts were merged. This is the Privacy policy blog post by Slack. There was another blog post (third-party) that talked about changes in their TOS to include arbitration. https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar...
tinco 12y ago
They're holding our chats hostage, we can't even look at our chat history without accepting the terms. And to think that we chose Slack over HipChat solely for their better ToS. This makes no sense at all, why would you force something like this onto your customers so aggressively? They're killing all of their good will with us in one fell swoop.
- chjj 12y ago
  I don't see binding arbitration as a bad thing as long as both parties are allowed to agree on an arbiter (I may have missed something, but I imagine that's always the case, and also the case here(?). ...Hell, maybe you could end up on Judge Judy). I hate to say it, but HipChat is really flawed (IRC, please). Slack is far superior technically. I'd still pick Slack. People may be blowing this out of proportion.
  - SEMW 12y ago
    If both sides can agree on an arbitrator, you don't need to have anything be binding, they can just agree to arbitration. Binding arbitration clauses that just say both sides have to agree on an arbitrator aren't really a thing. That would be an 'agreement to agree' which in some jurisdictions is even void, because it's impossible to sue anyone over a breach of it. (Whose breach is it when two parties couldn't agree an arbitrator? Well, both, and neither). So binding arbitration clauses either specify an arbitrator in the contract or allow one of the parties (guess which) to choose at runtime. The slack one is the former, it specifies one called 'JAMS ADR'.
  - mark212 12y ago
    you have to do it with JAMS according to the TOS and the list of arbitrators with JAMS is finite. You can go off-list if both parties agree, but that doesn't happen absent significant experience between counsel for both sides. The JAMS folks in SF Bay Area is not at all pro-consumer, btw.
  - timv 12y ago
    People may be blowing this out of proportion. No they're not. While I don't care about this change (I'm not based in the US, so we were never going to be in a position to take slack to court), changing TOS to suit the drafter and offering no options, no ability to get to your data and no time for your customers to properly review the changes is a bullsh*t move and they deserve to be called on it.
koopajah 12y ago
What I don't understand is why not have this be "opt-in". Meaning if your company does not need this feature for real legal reasons they don't enable it and everyone is happy. I've heard a few people saying they did not want this feature in Hipchat and would have to switch to make sure there team was not suspicious. If my company never needs to access private chats for legal reasons, there is no reason it should be enabled today and they can have access to it in 3 years. I understand specific companies have specific needs and Slack has to meet some of these but there is no reason that this should impact everyone else.
- SeoxyS 12y ago
  Did you read the article? It explains a very thorough opt-in process which involves mailing a signed letter on company letterhead and manual reviewal.
  - koopajah 12y ago
    Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. What I mean is that if in 3 years my company needs to have access to some logs, they will have to go through the multi-steps process but then have access to whatever they need (starting from today's logs) What I meant was that the possibility to access private chats should stay not retroactive and only happen once the company has explicitly stated it will need this feature enabled. EDIT: so that if my company has no legal needs today it won't have access to private chats made today once they decide in the future that they now need the feature
    - josh64 12y ago
      That is how it works. "It’s worth repeating – Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled."
      - koopajah 12y ago
        I did not understand the sentence that way even after reading multiple times but that seems to make sense now. I must have been too biased when reading it before. Thank you for pointing this out.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- joeyrobert 12y ago
  Very true. Companies are so willing to give their data away to the cloud, be it email and chat (Google Apps, Slack) or source code (GitHub, Bitbucket). Companies are getting cheaper to run, but that comes at a cost of leaking data to 3rd party companies. Rarely do new companies have the data infrastructure to keep everything internal.
BradRuderman 12y ago
If anyone needs help drafting TOS/Privacy Policy to include OR NOT mandatory arbitration check out UpCounsel's black friday special. You can work with an attorney to customize your legal documents to your use case. This is exactly why legal documents are not cookie cuter forms. https://www.upcounsel.com/black-friday https://www.upcounsel.com/black-friday -Disclaimer: I work at UpCounsel
- justfane 12y ago
  I don't think self promotion is allowed in threads like these...
  - dang 12y ago
    It doesn't seem so bad to me as long as it's disclosed and not done repeatedly. However, many users appear to disagree.
mattsoldo 12y ago
There are two separate issues here. Requiring arbitration is one. Disallowing class action is another. You cannot conflate these two things. Disallowing class action is absolutely in-favor of Slack and companies in general. Class action suits are a powerful pro-consumer force. They allow consumers to seek redress without cost - as the legal costs are paid for by the plaintiffs attorneys. Sometime consumers don't get much out of these suits while the attorneys make a lot. But their threat is a strong check on powerful companies. Forcing arbitration is a murkier matter. The first google result on arbitration vs trial (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/arbitration-pros-cons-29807.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/arbitration-pros-cons...) provides a decent analysis. Frequently arbitration is less expensive for both sides because the process is simplified. You also avoid shenanigans like fighting for 6 months about jurisdiction and venue (which either side can do to seek a more favorable court). The article states that arbitration is bad because consumers don't have legal representation. This is flat out wrong. Consumers can and should have legal representation in an arbitration. Just like in a trial, consumers need to pay for this legal representation themselves, and it would be foolish not to have it. The article also says that arbitration is bad because companies have more legal resources than consumers. This is a fallacious argument. Companies will also have more legal resources in a trial. If anything, the simplified process of arbitration makes this less of an advantage. So arbitration may be slightly better for consumers in that respect.
- duskwuff 12y ago
  > Class action suits are a powerful pro-consumer force. They allow consumers to seek redress without cost - as the legal costs are paid for by the plaintiffs attorneys. Keep in mind that Slack is a B2B service, though; its clients are companies, not individuals. Would a class-action suit really make sense here, given that most of the "consumers" involved should already have access to legal representation?
  - bjt 12y ago
    The article quotes Consumerist in giving this reason for class actions: > companies can harm large groups of customers but get away with only paying out to those people who are willing to arbitrate. Class action isn't just about big guy vs little guy, or corporation vs individual. It's also about discouraging practices that are illegal, and valuable in aggregate for the defendant, but too small to warrant a court case for any single plaintiff.
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
How can you force anyone to sign away their rights like this? I'm confused. If you want to file a class-action lawsuit, go ahead. No contract can prevent you from doing that.
- TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  In a sane legal system, that would be true. Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court has upheld mandatory arbitration clauses, so companies are now allowed to effectively exempt themselves from the law.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Is there oversight on arbitration? What stops the private arbitration system from just saying "Slack's always right"? Or must you come to an acceptable agreement in arbitration else go to court?
sinak 12y ago
Eric Mill's excellent post about Slack's new arbitration clause was just merged into this thread by the moderators. Here is the URL: https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar... The post is titled "Slack is now forcing users into arbitration and that is terrible." I highly recommend reading it, as there's no mention of the arbitration ToS change in Slack's own blog post. Edit: Also worth reading the ongoing conversation between Stewart Butterfield (Slack CEO) and Konklone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/536975596920635393 https://twitter.com/stewart/status/536975596920635393
- cortesoft 12y ago
  Wow, I can't believe these were merged... one is talking about flaws in an arbitration clause and the other is a press release from the company... and they choose the fluff press release. It makes these comments not make sense, and buries the real issue.
  - sinak 12y ago
    I agree, but the appropriate route is to email hn@ycombinator.com with this sort of feedback.
    - asdfg534h 12y ago
      Contacting the team is great & should happen, but declining to post feedback on an affected thread would be unfortunate for everyone involved. Context is key in any discussion. Let the voting system sort it out :)
  - etjossem 12y ago
    OP here. Two things happened today. Slack adopted new terms of service with a binding arbitration clause, which they linked from this press release. They also announced a new feature, Compliance Export - which allows team owners to inspect direct and private chats under certain circumstances. The blog post talks about that too. In my opinion, both are pretty serious and not fluff. I'd still advise digging deeper if you're a Slack user. Update: wow, someone changed both the title and url to point to the konklone article. I originally intended to primarily talk about the privacy implications of Compliance Export. Oh well.
smsm42 12y ago
Looks like this is the standard reaction to something that is akin to parasite infection in biology - abusive scammers that exploit US legal system to rob companies and individuals with money. There's a theory that a lot of features of modern organisms (including sexual reproduction) has evolved as a defense mechanism to parasites. Looks like we're witnessing such evolution right now. I wonder maybe the solution should be sought elsewhere - not trying to shame Slack (or others) into doing something that makes no sense in current environment and suffer from parasites, but try to fix the parasite problem instead or at least make it less severe.
kire456 12y ago
Fun fact: according to law in the Netherlands, companies can not restrict their terms to law of another country of the customer is Dutch[1], and binding arbitration clauses involving 'normal' customers are void[2]. No clue how easy it is to sue a company on the other side of the world, though. All sources are in Dutch, unfortunately. [1] http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005289/Boek6/Titel5/Afdeling3/Artikel247/geldigheidsdatum_22-09-2014 (part 4) [2] http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005289/Boek6/Titel5/Afdeling3/Artikel236/geldigheidsdatum_22-09-2014 (part n) [*] IANAL-but-this-guy-is: http://www.iusmentis.com/contracten/algemenevoorwaarden/#zwartelijst
TheSisb2 12y ago
If you're on the free version should you still worry? Is there any way chats older than the cap on backlog can be restored?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gohrt 12y ago
If you don't want cheap startup hosting TOS, don't use cheap startup hosting.
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
I think those that think this is a terrible move on Slack's part should find another chat solution. There are others. On the other hand, I support Slack's option to do this. I don't think people here appreciate the financial load that class action suits place on consumer service companies. Yes, class action lawsuits are a useful tool to extract concessions from companies, but they are also abused by litigators who are out to make a buck. Because often the cost of defending a lawsuit is such that early settlement is the best option even when the legal claims of the plaintiff are weak.

193 points by etjossem 12y ago

Meh. American government/supreme court are the ones who removed your rights. Slack is a corporation and should try to (within the law) remove as many of your rights as possible to protect investors and shareholders. If you don't like it, you know what to do. Re: Slack. It looks very nice but it's not very difficult to copy it's product as yet, it's USP as with most of these things is timing. I would suggest there must be a few competitors that you can replace it with already?

TheCoelacanth 12y ago
And their customers should do anything in their power to protect the interests of their own shareholders. That includes publicly complaining in hopes that the negative publicity will force Slack to change their terms. Even if you accept that corporations must disregard ethics and legality and act solely to maximize the interests of their shareholders, that doesn't that you can't complain about their actions.

leoh 12y ago

Is there a way for a user to know if their conversations are being logged for compliance?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
courtewing 12y ago
The post says that compliance is disabled by default and that all users will be notified via slack itself if it were to be enabled for your organization.
jn 12y ago
The feature is opt-in, requires a somewhat formal process to turn on, and all users will be notified "via Slack that the feature is active and that their private messages are subject to export". They don't make it clear if it'll be made sufficiently obvious to a new user who joins after it's turned on, but I'd guess so. Also quite nice that "Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled"

mark212 12y ago

Yet another company that is opting out of complying with any legal system by forcing an arbitration clause on its customers. I switched from Hipchat when it changed its TOS to include mandatory arbitration and now it looks like I'll have to ditch Slack, too. Pity. It's a good service. (kind of hilariously, the arbitration provisions are not well drafted and are almost certainly unenforceable.)

AlexandrB 12y ago
Kind of a two-faced approach: - please trust us with your data - you have no recourse if we do screw up though
wdewind 12y ago
> opting out of complying with any legal system by forcing an arbitration clause on its customers. I don't fully understand the context. Can you explain the arbitration clause they are forcing? Edit: Found this, also on the front page right now: https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar...
MCRed 12y ago
Companies often choose arbitration when doing agreements between themselves, even large companies. The reason for this is, if, say, Nike and Apple did a deal and it went sour enough to have a lawsuit, they can resolve it much more quickly and cheaply than if they had to go to court. The US court system is very slow, and requires significant resources in terms of lawyers that are not required with arbitration. This should also be to the benefit of individuals as well, as the bar for suing a company as a consumer is much higher than picking a mutually agreed arbiter and getting the case heard. IF the clause is fair (e.g.: mutually agreed arbiter certified by a national arbiter certification organization) then I tend to see these clauses as consumer friendly.
- gnopgnip 12y ago
  Without the clause, arbitration is still available if it is agreed by both parties. In practice the arbiters that do not side with the companies are not chosen again in the future.

1123581321 12y ago

I think that is a reasonable approach. The question my days working on NASD (FINRA) compliance have trained me to ask is how Slack controls employee and vendor write access to the audit log. I now work in a nearly regulation-free environment and we are happy users of Slack, so I'm just asking out of curiosity.

freshflowers 12y ago

It's a business tool, paid for by the employer. You shouldn't expect anything you do on there to remain private, just like you should expect your company mailbox to be private.

etjossem 12y ago
To be fair, the features in question are called "private groups" and "direct messages." There's bound to be some expectation that they are private and/or one-to-one.
- apetresc 12y ago
  Only for the technically naive. Anyone who understands that e-mailing a colleague within your company's email server can be read by someone with the appropriate admin privileges, will also understand that a "direct message" on Slack is still being stored on Slack servers, not going P2P.
- varikin 12y ago
  Would you expect emails via company mail servers from yourself to a coworker to be private? How about chats using some intranet based tool like MS Lync? Private and direct messages within a company should be thought of as not involving your coworkers, but IT and legal a might be monitoring.
  - etjossem 12y ago
    You, apetresc, and I are all unusual users - we're thinking about this in terms of network connections. Our first instinct is to figure out which parties in the chain could have stored a copy of the message. The typical user will probably just rely on clues like "private" or "direct" and make assumptions from there. The privacy level of these features can and will be misinterpreted. Read a few legal cases where employee communications are exhibited; you'd be surprised what people say on internal platforms.
    - goatforce5 12y ago

danielrhodes 12y ago

Compared to Hipchat, Slack has handled this compliance issue much better. I am personally uncomfortable with the idea of managers seeing employees communications, and Hipchat didn't put any consideration into this when they released that feature. Slack on the other hand seems quite aware of this issue and done things which make me much more comfortable, at least short-term. It goes to show what careful and empathetic product thinking can do to enhance your customer's experience.

getsat 12y ago
What is the difference between the situations? All I remember of HipChat's change was the same thing: conversations would only be logged moving forward after a particular date (rather than a switch being flipped).
- danielrhodes 12y ago
  It was my understanding that HipChat would make private logs easily available to any administrator of the company account in the same way that public chat logs were available. It was also made clear that this was not something which could be disabled, otherwise impeded, or a user would be notified of. (somebody correct me on this if things are different) On Slack, from what they describe, the feature is only available with a certain type of account, you can only export logs in bulk (i.e. it's not something easy to do, it has been made for a specific purpose), and employees will be notified if the feature is enabled/used.
koopajah 12y ago
You could say they just learnt from the Hipchat announcement and remebered to address the issue head-on which makes it seem like they really care. But in the end the problem is exactly the same and your company will now have access to whatever you write including private chats. Personally that means I'll ensure to avoid private chat on Slack and use external tools again on top of everything I already use which is clearly annoying.
mrjatx 12y ago
It is absolutely ridiculous to be uncomfortable with managers seeing employee communications. First off, any time you log in to a machine at most corporations you're told that ALL network activities are monitored. It's not a joke. They are monitored. Every packet you send out and every packet you receive CAN BE RETRIEVED. This isn't new. I'm 30 and have seen this since I was in high school. I'm sure older folk have seen it for even longer. Next off, you are owed NO privacy on services that your company is paying for for interoffice communication. You never have been. The fact that people bitched and moaned over Hipchat allowing history to be viewed is just ignorant and stupid. You know why managers have the ability to view these things? Harassment. Sexual, physical, altercations, etc. If your company has more than 5 people these things WILL come up and the INABILITY to retrieve this data is BAD. We have ALWAYS been able to retrieve this data via XMPP (Openfire), MSOffice Communicator/Lync, etc. This is NOT some mind blowing new development.

famousactress 12y ago

Sounds fine to me, but this has me curious: "In addition, Compliance Exports may include the edit history for messages that team members have edited as well as messages that team members have marked for deletion." That makes me curious whether "deleting" a message actually deletes the data, in any circumstances.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
If they're archiving everything including edits, then no.
- bsimpson 12y ago
  It's possible that they only log edits/deletes for enterprise customers with this feature enabled.
tptacek 12y ago
If they're complying with e.g. FINRA, then they can't delete messages; they're required to provide a high-fidelity export.
- famousactress 12y ago
  Oh, sorry.. I understand that. My real question was for those of us on standard plans is hard-deletion a thing, and has it ever been in the past. In fact, even for folks on plans this covers it's not clear how much of this is "backwards compatible" with regard to data and conversations in Slack prior to these terms. [Edit: actually I see now "Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled" so strike the second paragraph.]

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skrebbel 12y ago

Why not just make two policies: one for bigcorps where there is a big (but friendly) "your boss can read your messages and we'll tell you when it happens" at first sign up, and one for normal, sane, organizations where the old TOS simply remains?

aspir 12y ago
That's almost assuredly what's happening in practice. Large companies/orders have the leeway to reasonably negotiate with Slack. In cases like that, the standard policies set the framework for where that negotiation begins.
ben336 12y ago
Thats basically what they described isn't it? This compliance export feature is the only thing that allows reading private messages, and it is disabled by default and requires significant hoop-jumping to enable. So for most companies the original privacy policy will apply effectively.

eli 12y ago

I personally would feel very uncomfortable reading any employee messages... BUT here's why I think it's OK in principle to have the ability to snoop enterprise IM: we require everyone to use this chat system. It's part of your job to be on it and work is conducted over it, so we have some plausible responsibility in making sure it's being used properly and that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I'm solidly against reading employee's personal email or gchat or IRC messages even though I think legally we probably could.

jonstewart 12y ago
In the US, document discovery for litigation typically falls on the defendant. So a company that's being sued is required under the law to produce relevant business records and communications. If it's hard to access such "documents" en masse and export them for legal review, then businesses which must deal with nontrivial litigation requirements (the threshold is often right around the $1B/annual revenue mark) will not use the system. In the EU, things are a bit different and employees have a limited right to privacy when using corporate systems. Not so much in the US, though.

aurora72 12y ago

Nothing's indispensible, particularly on the Internet. So why complain? Just go and find another environment. If you can't, build one. I used to complain about Delicious and after a while I stopped complaining and decided to use another service. As simple as that.

javajosh 12y ago
> why complain Because it offers a non-zero chance of the best outcome: a low cost, high benefit outcome where the world changes to fall in line with your expectations. If you do not say anything then the world has little chance of changing. It is a rational result of cost benefit analysis. (Consider that moving to another service is costly, and building a new one more costly still.) Additionally, I would point out that complaining about things that we don't like is a universal human trait, which you yourself demonstrate. :)
- aurora72 12y ago
  Hey dude I'm on your side on this issue, I wholeheartedly see everything you say. By saying "why complain" my target was those dictatorship-practising web instances and the thing is to remind them that nothing's irreplecable, particularly on the Internet.
joshu 12y ago
Yeah, me too.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

That's capitalism for you.

davidu 12y ago

Lawsuits are incredibly painful. The emotional and time tax to be in one, regardless of what side you are on, is immense. I hear what this guy is saying. However, having been in three lawsuits, one of which I initiated, I would do the same thing as Slack. I would generally try to do anything reasonable I could to avoid a lawsuit. Arbitration or mediation (very different things) is almost always required anyways, by the courts, if you file a lawsuit. They make you try. At least they try to force a mediator. If you force arbitration, it's the same thing as forcing a lawsuit and would result in my immediate desire to resolve your issue without continued legal maneuvers. Anecdotally, and as I think most litigation attorneys would tell you -- People settle lawsuits because they are either out of time, or money. They almost never settle because they think they've lost the case. The merits of the case rarely matter once you are knee-deep in the litigation, but the toll a lawsuit takes does factor into a settlement decision quite often.

deleted 12y ago
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debacle 12y ago

It's hard to justify not putting a mandatory arbitration clause into a contract, even if it is unethical. It's an incredible boon for companies and most users don't appreciate what they're losing.

ben336 12y ago
I'm always worried when I see sentences with the structure "It's hard to justify [doing/not doing] X even if it's [unethical/illegal]". What type of justification do you need?
- debacle 12y ago
  Why are you worried? From the suits' perspective: 1. Arbitration is going to potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line if there's a legal issue. 2. Arbitration incredibly favors the company over the customer. 3. Most customers don't understand the value of their right to civil action. So while an arbitration clause is, in my mind, equivalent to telling your customers you don't actually care about being reliable, many companies are putting them into place just because they can.
  - mark212 12y ago
    #1 is false. Ask Google or Apple or JPMorgan Chase -- who get sued frequently, yet don't bother with arb clauses #2 is true in most instances, but in order to find out you have to actually go through the entire arbitration and pay your lawyers' bills #3 is very true, but that only adds to the idea that it's unethical. Companies put them in because the corporate defense bar thinks this is the new hotness -- and few of those folks have ever actually litigated any of these clauses.
  - ben336 12y ago
    I worry when people brush aside ethics concerns without deep concern about the consequences. I'm not arguing for or against arbitration, I'm not well enough informed. I'm arguing against claiming you have to take an action you believe to be unethical simply because of the gain involved.

anonbanker 12y ago

What's the problem? Send these guys a private offer to arbitrate, according to your terms. Put your concerns on an affidavit concluded with your offer, and give them an opportunity to respond within 10-15 days. If they go silent (they will), send a notice of default next, and then file your lawsuit in civil court. You will have satisfied the private arbitration clause (arbitration went nowhere), and with your options exhausted, you now must file in court. Source: I'm an ex aequo et bono arbitrator.

lanstein 12y ago
To say nothing of the fact that large companies are not agreeing to these terms, they will have custom MSAs which dictate jurisdiction, etc.
function_seven 12y ago
I may be a bit dense, but your comment doesn't seem to relate to the article I just read. Is this the wrong thread or am I missing something? EDIT: I have to be missing something. Half the comments here talk about arbitration, but that word doesn't appear once in the blog post. Was it edited?
- etjossem 12y ago
  The changes to the Terms of Service (linked from the blog post) include a new binding arbitration clause.
- slig 12y ago
  Looks like another thread was merged here.
- thetrumanshow 12y ago
  Yes. If you Google "slack ycombinator", you'll see the original title in the results (as of 12:26 PST). Edit: also, as another commenter said, it was merged.
- mbreese 12y ago
  You're not missing anything. Two posts were merged. This is the Privacy policy blog post by Slack. There was another blog post (third-party) that talked about changes in their TOS to include arbitration. https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar...

tinco 12y ago

They're holding our chats hostage, we can't even look at our chat history without accepting the terms. And to think that we chose Slack over HipChat solely for their better ToS. This makes no sense at all, why would you force something like this onto your customers so aggressively? They're killing all of their good will with us in one fell swoop.

chjj 12y ago
I don't see binding arbitration as a bad thing as long as both parties are allowed to agree on an arbiter (I may have missed something, but I imagine that's always the case, and also the case here(?). ...Hell, maybe you could end up on Judge Judy). I hate to say it, but HipChat is really flawed (IRC, please). Slack is far superior technically. I'd still pick Slack. People may be blowing this out of proportion.
- SEMW 12y ago
  If both sides can agree on an arbitrator, you don't need to have anything be binding, they can just agree to arbitration. Binding arbitration clauses that just say both sides have to agree on an arbitrator aren't really a thing. That would be an 'agreement to agree' which in some jurisdictions is even void, because it's impossible to sue anyone over a breach of it. (Whose breach is it when two parties couldn't agree an arbitrator? Well, both, and neither). So binding arbitration clauses either specify an arbitrator in the contract or allow one of the parties (guess which) to choose at runtime. The slack one is the former, it specifies one called 'JAMS ADR'.
- mark212 12y ago
  you have to do it with JAMS according to the TOS and the list of arbitrators with JAMS is finite. You can go off-list if both parties agree, but that doesn't happen absent significant experience between counsel for both sides. The JAMS folks in SF Bay Area is not at all pro-consumer, btw.
- timv 12y ago
  People may be blowing this out of proportion. No they're not. While I don't care about this change (I'm not based in the US, so we were never going to be in a position to take slack to court), changing TOS to suit the drafter and offering no options, no ability to get to your data and no time for your customers to properly review the changes is a bullsh*t move and they deserve to be called on it.

koopajah 12y ago

What I don't understand is why not have this be "opt-in". Meaning if your company does not need this feature for real legal reasons they don't enable it and everyone is happy. I've heard a few people saying they did not want this feature in Hipchat and would have to switch to make sure there team was not suspicious. If my company never needs to access private chats for legal reasons, there is no reason it should be enabled today and they can have access to it in 3 years. I understand specific companies have specific needs and Slack has to meet some of these but there is no reason that this should impact everyone else.

SeoxyS 12y ago
Did you read the article? It explains a very thorough opt-in process which involves mailing a signed letter on company letterhead and manual reviewal.
- koopajah 12y ago
  Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. What I mean is that if in 3 years my company needs to have access to some logs, they will have to go through the multi-steps process but then have access to whatever they need (starting from today's logs) What I meant was that the possibility to access private chats should stay not retroactive and only happen once the company has explicitly stated it will need this feature enabled. EDIT: so that if my company has no legal needs today it won't have access to private chats made today once they decide in the future that they now need the feature
  - josh64 12y ago
    That is how it works. "It’s worth repeating – Compliance Exports are not retroactive and do not apply to past private conversations before the feature is enabled."
    - koopajah 12y ago
      I did not understand the sentence that way even after reading multiple times but that seems to make sense now. I must have been too biased when reading it before. Thank you for pointing this out.

deleted 12y ago

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joeyrobert 12y ago
Very true. Companies are so willing to give their data away to the cloud, be it email and chat (Google Apps, Slack) or source code (GitHub, Bitbucket). Companies are getting cheaper to run, but that comes at a cost of leaking data to 3rd party companies. Rarely do new companies have the data infrastructure to keep everything internal.

BradRuderman 12y ago

If anyone needs help drafting TOS/Privacy Policy to include OR NOT mandatory arbitration check out UpCounsel's black friday special. You can work with an attorney to customize your legal documents to your use case. This is exactly why legal documents are not cookie cuter forms. https://www.upcounsel.com/black-friday https://www.upcounsel.com/black-friday -Disclaimer: I work at UpCounsel

justfane 12y ago
I don't think self promotion is allowed in threads like these...
- dang 12y ago
  It doesn't seem so bad to me as long as it's disclosed and not done repeatedly. However, many users appear to disagree.

mattsoldo 12y ago

There are two separate issues here. Requiring arbitration is one. Disallowing class action is another. You cannot conflate these two things. Disallowing class action is absolutely in-favor of Slack and companies in general. Class action suits are a powerful pro-consumer force. They allow consumers to seek redress without cost - as the legal costs are paid for by the plaintiffs attorneys. Sometime consumers don't get much out of these suits while the attorneys make a lot. But their threat is a strong check on powerful companies. Forcing arbitration is a murkier matter. The first google result on arbitration vs trial (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/arbitration-pros-cons-29807.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/arbitration-pros-cons...) provides a decent analysis. Frequently arbitration is less expensive for both sides because the process is simplified. You also avoid shenanigans like fighting for 6 months about jurisdiction and venue (which either side can do to seek a more favorable court). The article states that arbitration is bad because consumers don't have legal representation. This is flat out wrong. Consumers can and should have legal representation in an arbitration. Just like in a trial, consumers need to pay for this legal representation themselves, and it would be foolish not to have it. The article also says that arbitration is bad because companies have more legal resources than consumers. This is a fallacious argument. Companies will also have more legal resources in a trial. If anything, the simplified process of arbitration makes this less of an advantage. So arbitration may be slightly better for consumers in that respect.

duskwuff 12y ago
> Class action suits are a powerful pro-consumer force. They allow consumers to seek redress without cost - as the legal costs are paid for by the plaintiffs attorneys. Keep in mind that Slack is a B2B service, though; its clients are companies, not individuals. Would a class-action suit really make sense here, given that most of the "consumers" involved should already have access to legal representation?
- bjt 12y ago
  The article quotes Consumerist in giving this reason for class actions: > companies can harm large groups of customers but get away with only paying out to those people who are willing to arbitrate. Class action isn't just about big guy vs little guy, or corporation vs individual. It's also about discouraging practices that are illegal, and valuable in aggregate for the defendant, but too small to warrant a court case for any single plaintiff.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

How can you force anyone to sign away their rights like this? I'm confused. If you want to file a class-action lawsuit, go ahead. No contract can prevent you from doing that.

TheCoelacanth 12y ago
In a sane legal system, that would be true. Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court has upheld mandatory arbitration clauses, so companies are now allowed to effectively exempt themselves from the law.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Is there oversight on arbitration? What stops the private arbitration system from just saying "Slack's always right"? Or must you come to an acceptable agreement in arbitration else go to court?

sinak 12y ago

Eric Mill's excellent post about Slack's new arbitration clause was just merged into this thread by the moderators. Here is the URL: https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-arbitration-and-that-is-terrible https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar... The post is titled "Slack is now forcing users into arbitration and that is terrible." I highly recommend reading it, as there's no mention of the arbitration ToS change in Slack's own blog post. Edit: Also worth reading the ongoing conversation between Stewart Butterfield (Slack CEO) and Konklone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/536975596920635393 https://twitter.com/stewart/status/536975596920635393

cortesoft 12y ago
Wow, I can't believe these were merged... one is talking about flaws in an arbitration clause and the other is a press release from the company... and they choose the fluff press release. It makes these comments not make sense, and buries the real issue.
- sinak 12y ago
  I agree, but the appropriate route is to email hn@ycombinator.com with this sort of feedback.
  - asdfg534h 12y ago
    Contacting the team is great & should happen, but declining to post feedback on an affected thread would be unfortunate for everyone involved. Context is key in any discussion. Let the voting system sort it out :)
- etjossem 12y ago
  OP here. Two things happened today. Slack adopted new terms of service with a binding arbitration clause, which they linked from this press release. They also announced a new feature, Compliance Export - which allows team owners to inspect direct and private chats under certain circumstances. The blog post talks about that too. In my opinion, both are pretty serious and not fluff. I'd still advise digging deeper if you're a Slack user. Update: wow, someone changed both the title and url to point to the konklone article. I originally intended to primarily talk about the privacy implications of Compliance Export. Oh well.

smsm42 12y ago

Looks like this is the standard reaction to something that is akin to parasite infection in biology - abusive scammers that exploit US legal system to rob companies and individuals with money. There's a theory that a lot of features of modern organisms (including sexual reproduction) has evolved as a defense mechanism to parasites. Looks like we're witnessing such evolution right now. I wonder maybe the solution should be sought elsewhere - not trying to shame Slack (or others) into doing something that makes no sense in current environment and suffer from parasites, but try to fix the parasite problem instead or at least make it less severe.

kire456 12y ago

Fun fact: according to law in the Netherlands, companies can not restrict their terms to law of another country of the customer is Dutch[1], and binding arbitration clauses involving 'normal' customers are void[2]. No clue how easy it is to sue a company on the other side of the world, though. All sources are in Dutch, unfortunately. [1] http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005289/Boek6/Titel5/Afdeling3/Artikel247/geldigheidsdatum_22-09-2014 (part 4) [2] http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005289/Boek6/Titel5/Afdeling3/Artikel236/geldigheidsdatum_22-09-2014 (part n) [*] IANAL-but-this-guy-is: http://www.iusmentis.com/contracten/algemenevoorwaarden/#zwartelijst

TheSisb2 12y ago

If you're on the free version should you still worry? Is there any way chats older than the cap on backlog can be restored?

deleted 12y ago

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gohrt 12y ago

If you don't want cheap startup hosting TOS, don't use cheap startup hosting.

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

I think those that think this is a terrible move on Slack's part should find another chat solution. There are others. On the other hand, I support Slack's option to do this. I don't think people here appreciate the financial load that class action suits place on consumer service companies. Yes, class action lawsuits are a useful tool to extract concessions from companies, but they are also abused by litigators who are out to make a buck. Because often the cost of defending a lawsuit is such that early settlement is the best option even when the legal claims of the plaintiff are weak.