Business Communication Service Slack, in Compliance With US Regulations, Broadens Ban on Users in Sanctioned Nations

Earlier this year, business communication service Slack began to block users in Syria, Iran, and select other embargoed countries to comply with U.S. regulations. This week, the company has broadened the scope of the ban by blocking some users if they have moved from or visited any of the sanctioned nations in recent years. From a report: The company began to face a backlash early today after several users complained that their Slack accounts had been deactivated and that they never received a formal warning from the company. Part of the problem, as Sarah Shugars, a PhD candidate at Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, pointed out, is that some users have been blocked even if they have been living in the United States for a number of years.

Re:

[tepples]

Whats's wrong withe email/IRC

Let me count the problems that Discord and Slack solve compared to a basic IRC server:

• Common IRC servers have no persistent log capability, meaning a user misses messages sent to a channel while the user is offline. I'm not aware of an IRC server distribution that includes a bouncer as a standard feature.
• Common IRC servers have no attachment filedrop for use by logged-in users. Instead it has DCC, which is one-to-one and doesn't work through NAT.
• Common IRC servers have no link summary bot. Instead, if someo

Re:

[tepples]

The free software solution is to create an IRC distribution adding these features. But the free software solution is less profitable than "an incompatible and locked-in system".

Re:

[tepples]

The oh so difficult features you described could easily be solved by a bot and fairly straightforward scripting on the servers that I've been on in the far past. In fact all of them had in some of the more sophisticated ones that I frequented.

Say I want to put up an IRC server on a VPS, and I want to add these features (logs, attachment hosting, link summaries, and groups). Which distribution of IRC server software has them? And which IRC client integrates them? Or would this be something I need to write myself? Discord and Slack are cheaper than hiring someone to integrate all this into IRC for you.

Oh Crap

[SuperKendall]

Slack began to block users in Syria, Iran, and select other embargoed countries

I hadn't really been worried about terrorism before, but now that Slack is no longer wasting the time of a whole lot of people in these countries I am deeply concerned.

Oh good

[bobstreo]

now if banks would actually do the same thing, we'd have something going on.

Maybe some programmers in the affected countries could actually be happier and less likely to become terrorists because of this. /s

Re:

[fustakrakich]

from Facebook

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[omnichad]

So innocent refugees, for example, can move from one oppressive regime to another one. Or equally bad, this affects humanitarian aid workers from the US.

Time to migrate to Rocket Chat?

[ilsaloving]

When I came across Rocket Chat, my first thought was, "I wish this was available before we went to Slack." Cause now that we're on Slack, it's one of those, "Don't fix what ain't broke" problems.

Looks like Slack took it upon themselves to fix that.

https://rocket.chat/ [rocket.chat]