Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
from Facebook
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No, they would simply create a side chanell by which to transfer records and reciepts. After all that's all that money is records and receipts exchangeable for goods and services. as long as you can physically move goods and perform Services you can bypass popular forms of currency and still operate. Terrorists are created by the government's they oppose. They are a natural reaction to oppression. Terrorists and freedom fighter mean the same thing. Distinguishing difference is which side conflict you are rooting for.
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/
Whats's wrong withe email/IRC
Let me count the problems that Discord and Slack solve compared to a basic IRC server:
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".
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.
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.
The government and law is enforced by the same mechanics the only difference is whether or not is socially labeled as necessary. And so the same action may be terroristic or legitimate enforcement , the only difference is social approval. The Difference is subjective. The variable is whether you had a set of experiences in life that relates moreon this side of the conflict or that side of the conflict. our government practice is everything and more that we accuse terrorist of practicing the only difference is that we believe that they have the right to versus those we label terrorists. And so there is no,,outside of shared imagination, terrorism or Freedom Fighters. Simply opposing orders.
Freedom Fighter fights a dominant order in order to free themselves and or others from it. What they do next after gaining freedom from that order, is another matter altogether.