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Business Communication Service Slack, in Compliance With US Regulations, Broadens Ban on Users in Sanctioned Nations (venturebeat.com)
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.
Don't you mean "IRC for Dummies Slack"?
We've let the millennials drag us down this path of monetized centralization.
We wanted decentralized messaging with TeX-quality typesetting and Jupyter-style reproduction.
Instead, all we got was a startup company, aptly named "Slack", through whom we must send all our communications in some proprietary form.
Computing has become a shadow of what it once was. Damn the myopic, sniveling millennials.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Conservative laws like FOSTA and SESTA have forced those of us who host user generated content to switch from impartially hosting to now actively policing content
"If in doubt, ban it" is now the mantra. And it will continue to get worse.
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
do they even know who has moved from, or even just visited, one of these countries?
where the fuck are they getting their data?
Someone must be unhappy er mad about something
"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."
Problems???? Heh! That's the start of the solution! If banks and communication systems banned anyone that's EVER been to Iran, etc. Terrorists will disappear quickly.
Had to use Slack at my last stint. Would've been very grateful for them blocking me back then.
Jeez, what a waste of time.
Governments and Big Corporations are the big terrorists! Maybe if they weren't funding the little terrorists to blow up random civilians so the sheeple felt threatened we would be focusing our attention where it counted. At those at the top.
just switch to it.
FOSS is capitalism: People choose to allocate their own resources (including their labor) to this or to that.
GPDR: "don’t use that information for anything but the specific purposes consent were given for".... did EU user affected by this block consent to Slack using their IPs to block them for past travels?
"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."
Because just before that, the OFAC called them up and asked how much they'd all like to spend some time in a federal prison.
Seriously, this is a US law that every company has to comply with, and if they ignore these kinds of laws long enough (out of ignorance), they eventually get a call about it.
It happened where I work too.
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/
It would be great if Slack could finish the job and ban users in all the remaining countries too. Slack is a horrible cancer, and the degree of wasted computing resources to implement a simple chat program is reprehensible. They represent everything that is wrong with modern software development.
Business Communication Service Slack, in Compliance With US Regulations, Broadens Ban on Users in Sanctioned Nations
would read better as:
Slack Broadens Ban on Users in Sanctioned Nations in Compliance With US Regulations
Summary/article should then define Slack as "a Business Communication Service"
I am genuinely confused -- especially on Iran ( Cuba is a different story ). There are specific licenses in place for over the internet communications in Iran. It is nothing more than a business decision on part of Slack team ( though I do not doubt they simply do not want to deal with a headache of monitoring it 24/7 ).
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran_gld1.pdf
We just migrated to it last month and are now dumping it.