
Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada - jwildeboer
https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075510422617219077
======
SamWhited
I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote
Slack for ages, and this is __exactly __the hypothetical situation I always
use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect
embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller
writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when
we were considering going public; this is the point at which I started
considering leaving.

Using a proprietary protocol that doesn't allow any form of federation is an
unacceptable way to build a global community. Please consider using an IRC
based service for group chat or an XMPP based service where 1:1, history,
rapid reconnects, and other more complex chat features are required (yes, if
you're a dev you have to use XML which is annoying, but overall it's a well
designed protocol, so get over it). This lets you host your own, and (in the
case of XMPP at least) if one person wants to use a U.S. based service and
another is in Iran they can just sign up for a Belgian account (or wherever).
We can't afford to let he internet splinter off into siloed tiers based on
nationality.

~~~
wpietri
I would love to see more things built on open protocols. But for that to be
the case, we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open
protocols.

We should start by admitting that Slack beat IRC. Beat it like a cheap hallway
rug. IRC was always a terrible experience for novices, and it wasn't a great
experience for experts. That it had any users at all is a testament not to
IRC, but to what it enabled. Slack found a way to provide the same value but
with a much better user experience. And then they rapidly iterated on that
experience, making it better and better.

They started out with IRC and XMPP bridges. But they eventually shut those
down because they were a drag on improving the product. When faced with the
same choice, IRC kept the original protocol and shut down improving the
product. This was an understandable choice, but one that set up the situation
where commercial developers could come in and do something radically better.
Open source needs to figure out how to compete with that, or things like this
will keep happening.

~~~
adriand
I think as ethical, intelligent and conscious individuals, we folks in the
developer and hacker community want people to make decisions on the basis of
principles, when the reality is that people generally make decisions on the
basis of convenience. In fact, people are often willing to _sacrifice_ their
principles (to a certain extent) in the name of convenience.

If we want people to use principled technology, then we need to be able to
honestly advertise products as "it's just as good as X, and also doesn't
violate [your privacy|human rights|the environment|etc.]" If we have to say,
"It's not quite as good, but..." then we're dead in the water. (Side note: I
switched to Firefox out of principle and I'm hopeful it will hold the line on
market share, since it really is just as good as Chrome.)

The issue is that we're dealing with corporations who aren't just rich and
powerful, they are also innovative, agile, and laser-focused on providing
consumer value. Slack is doing an amazing job at serving their users!

You wrote, "we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open
protocols." It's a really interesting dilemma and I suspect it's one that
isn't solved by better technology, better design, etc., but rather by
addressing the base economics of the situation. We need a scenario where
principled, open-source, ethical technology is generating the kind of
investment we're seeing in Silicon Valley unicorns so they can innovate the
same way.

~~~
nemothekid
If we want people to use principled technology, it has to be usable, full
stop. As a developer, being able to say "I'm willing to sacrifice convenience,
in the name of principle", is a privileged position - you _know_ how to
navigate software when it gets difficult - other people don't.

What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not
everyone using Slack is a developer. The world doesn't consist solely of
developers - and if your company is 30% of engineers, and the other 70%
doesn't have the reserve to wrestle with XML, then your company is using
Slack. Otherwise, you are simply choosing to sell out your friends and family
in the name of "principle" as well.

Personally, I'm tired of the comparisons to IRC and XMPP. Both are garbage -
time and time again its been show how difficult it is to create greate
software on these protocols. Contrary to your final statement, there have been
better open source applications - gitter and riot come to mind.

~~~
u801e
> What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not
> everyone using Slack is a developer.

I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not
developers. They just used the mIRC client on windows to do that. They also
managed to configure their email and news clients to send and read email and
browse usenet.

I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background
came from for using something like IRC.

~~~
ry-n
> I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not
> developers > I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical
> background came from for using something like IRC.

You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical
background higher than that of the average computer user. There are plenty of
tech-savvy, non-developers who can get up and running with things like IRC.
There are plenty more non-technical users who can't. Or at least wouldn't
given the learning curve time commitment.

I'm the only person in my family who would be able to sign on to IRC in under
an hour whereas they'd all be able to have slack up and running in a matter of
minutes.

~~~
u801e
> You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical
> background higher than that of the average computer user.

Unless the technical skill of the average computer user has decreased
substantially in the last 10 to 15 years, that shouldn't really be the case.

~~~
sotojuan
It has. Everyone uses computers now for less technical tasks, and some pretty
much only use their phone or tablet.

~~~
gsich
Time to learn something then.

~~~
jackvalentine
Sure... they learned Slack.

~~~
gsich
Nothing to learn there.

~~~
jackvalentine
I don’t think you realise how well you just made the case for using Slack
instead of IRC or XMPP with that comment.

~~~
gsich
No. I expect a certain competence when using a computer. If this level of
competence is not enough to even install a piece of software and configure the
most basic settings, then this person should not own a PC, yet use one.

It's amazing that when it comes to computers, it is somehow acceptable to be
dumb. It's acceptable to not learn new stuff. It's acceptable to not read in
order to understand stuff. As can be read in the comments here.

~~~
jackvalentine
Do you want to be ‘right’, or actually have users?

The whole ethos of startups and Silicon Valley has been around finding a
market for your product. If people don’t want to use it then you can’t blame
anyone but yourself.

Feel free to chat with yourself using an ideologically pure system... it’ll be
lonely though.

------
jwildeboer
So it _seems_ that Slack is going through their log files and closing down
accounts that have used IP addresses that are considered to be in embargoed
countries. I base that assumption on various comments here and on Twitter.

If true, it is definitely the worst way to do. It doesn't take into account
any circumstantial evidence that could explain the use of such an IP address
(vacation, VPN, BGP or a mistake in the geolocation data used) and Slack
doesn't seem to offer any way to appeal or even inform other users about what
happened to their contacts.

Slack should offer a configurable notification that could contain other
contact methods to the banned user. Slack could also give those users at least
sth like 48 hours to inform their contacts about what is going to happen. And
it could offer banned users a downloadable archive of all content created to
make sure no data is lost.

But the way Slack is doing it right now means that you can't trust them and
one should really think about relying on their services in the future.

I am still on IRC and XMPP (Jabber) for good reasons ;)

~~~
basilgohar
This is very disturbing for ways that some folks might not realize. One of the
servers I've leased was assigned an IP address range whose reverse DNS (i.e.,
PTR records) ended in .ir.

I only discovered this because I was trying to use Google's CLI tools and got
blocked, with the shocking message that access from embargoed countries was
not allowed. I was utterly confused given that my server, myself, and anything
to do with my hosting was all contained completely within the US. After
studying the message and finally figuring out after some time the problem, I
reported it to my host and they promptly submitted a correction to that, and
the issue was resolved.

But had I somehow used this host to access Slack, I would find my own account
deleted, if what is being deduced here is correct.

Deleting or disabling accounts is completely the wrong approach. The
absolutely maximum that could be done is BLOCKING ACCESS (i.e., actually
embargoing) from these restricted IPs. Disabling or deleting accounts is
stupid and shows that Slack has a profound MISUNDERSTANDING of how the
Internet works, i.e., it's not perfect. This is exactly akin to using an IP
address for identification. IP addresses, and hostnames, are not
identification of people and cannot nor should be used for these kinds of
heavy-handed, punitive punishments.

~~~
mirimir
Wow. But yes. I recall news from a year or two ago, about hosting providers
not cleaning up old PTR records. Also, I gather that there's quite the market
now for IPv4 blocks, so geolocation is an iffy thing.

------
jordank
My wife’s Slack account was closed yesterday.

She created the account while traveling in Cuba (legally) years ago and hasn’t
been back to Cuba or any other sanctioned country since.

She is a cofounder of an org that uses Slack heavily and has now lost access
to all her messages and files from the past couple years of work.

There appears to be no appeal process here.

~~~
mfer
If Slack did this because of her trip to Cuba years ago it means they have
kept records of her IP going back years.

This causes me to think about the metadata records they have held onto in
addition to all the data.

~~~
jordank
Right, which should also indicate that this trip to Cuba wasn’t part of a
pattern but rather an anomaly.

I understand the complex legal frames that this exists in, but they appear to
have the data to be way more precise here.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They may have the data, but they have no incentive to care whether or not
their inferences are correct. This is a common problem with ostensibly data-
driven companies.

------
dustinmoris
Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so
extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe.

\- Is this all made up to prove some point?

\- Is this just how the US ticks right now?

\- Is Slack just completely gone mad?

\- Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays?

\- Is this the future of the web?

The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't be surprised
if this is all true or equally all made up is what really scares me. Ten years
ago I would have had a lot more confidence and faith in the world that this
must be either a big mistake or something fishy, but today I feel like
anything goes and in a week's time nobody will care again :(

~~~
jstanley
I don't think this is the future of the web.

This sort of thing is a temporary blip before everybody figures out
decentralised solutions for everything.

Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems
like this. A decentralised solution will continue to "just work", while
centralised solutions continue to boot people off. It's pretty obvious which
one is going to win.

~~~
simias
Except looking at the past 20 years or so it seems clear that the trend is
going the other way around. Slack itself is an example of that, not long ago
it would've been a set of self-hosted tools. People have ditched IRC in favor
of Discord and friends, they've ditched decentralized forums, BBSs and mailing
lists for social networks, everybody hosts everything using the same four or
five cloud providers, streaming and direct download is much more popular than
BitTorrent etc...

Maybe this trend will reverse eventually but I don't really see the signs yet.
The Cryptocurrency crowd keeps shouting "decentralization" but they still fail
to create applications that can compete with the centralized alternatives in
terms of usability, performance and cost. There have been many attempts at
making decentralized social networks but they failed to gain mainstream
adoption. IPFS works pretty well but again, hardly anybody uses it.

I'm all for decentralization but there's no denying that there seems to be a
path of least resistance towards centralized solutions. They're easier to
develop, easier to maintain, easier to upgrade and often easier to use.

So for me decentralization is the objective, but unfortunately it's not
"clearly the end game".

~~~
lorenzhs
This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I just made a Show HN post about
Glowing Bear, which is a web front-end for the WeeChat IRC client:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725038).
It's entirely implemented as client-side javascript, and you can easily self-
host it without any requests being made to other servers. For me, it solves
the problem of accessing IRC wherever I am without having to fumble with ssh
on my phone or monospace text. And it doesn't have the limited functionality
of these modern web IRC clients implemented in node because it's just a front-
end for WeeChat, which is one of the most powerful IRC clients around.

Regarding your note on the path of least resistance leading to centralized
solutions---Glowing Bear/WeeChat is definitely more work to set up than just
signing up for Slack. You need a machine that runs WeeChat and get a TLS
certificate so that the browser will let you connect securely. That definitely
limits it to a somewhat nerdy demographic, even among the HN readers ;)

~~~
kuschku
Weechat (with weechat android and glowingbear), IRCCloud, and Quassel (with
Quasseldroid and quassel-webserver) are indeed awesome solutions for IRC.

(Personally, I’m ofc biased, as I’m the dev of
[https://quasseldroid.info/](https://quasseldroid.info/)).

But I think for these solutions to gain more mainstream appeal, we’d need to
make the setup much simpler, and work on ideally making it a single-click
solution for an organization to set this up for their members. And maybe even
provide hosted services (similar to IRCCloud) for the many users that would
rather pay than run their own servers.

~~~
lorenzhs
Yes, you're absolutely correct. Setup is indeed more complicated than it
should be for Glowing Bear. I would love to have an automated solution for it,
I just don't want to be the one to build it :)

------
robteix
Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's
up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I
know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can
doesn't mean you should.

Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with
support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack
should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead,
they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you
> can doesn't mean you should.

Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export
regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries
they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions
continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge
fine. I don't know how that works given how Huawei is a Chinese company, but
there you go.

To clarify: private companies are not and should not be above the law.

~~~
AJ007
This is another strong case for open source software development along with
open, publicly available, standards and protocols.

This isn't about Slack, it isn't about US sanctions law. It is about any
private entity creating closed sourced, remotely hosted software. Everyone
knows that APIs can be pulled at any time (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Spying can
be mandated whether it is the US government, China, or anyone else.

As end users it is never clear what is going on behind the curtain. It is
never certain the product will be here tomorrow - whatever the reason. No one
would build a high rise where all of the elevators could suddenly vanish, yet
we are increasingly putting the critical pieces of our businesses and our
lives in the hands of entities that only need to flick a switch and everything
_instantly_ vanishes.

~~~
geofft
To put a finer point on it: open communications protocols driven by free
software and end-to-end encryption both are and should be above the law, at
least where the law purports to create national boundaries on the internet.

 _Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I
come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you
of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereignty where we gather._

 _We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address
you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always
speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally
independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right
to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason
to fear._

[https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-
independence)

~~~
nradov
That's a nice fantasy but the reality is that humans and computers still have
to physically exist inside national boundaries. Flesh and steel still count
for a lot.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's why free/libre software advocates talk so frequently about technologies
that could abstract flesh and steel away.

~~~
nradov
How exactly would that work?

~~~
kaveh_h
Tor, bittorrent, bitcoin and other decentrialized open source software are
great examples. No government can control what no one controls.

------
robotbikes
Wow. This seems rather unprecedented and unnecessary, based upon the lack of
action in this regard by other companies I don't know why Slack would do this.
If for instance this kind of arbitrary action took place on GitHub I could see
it having a detrimental impact to free software projects. This is another good
reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of
proprietary SaaS solutions.

~~~
kkarakk
>This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable
platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions

until someone targets your host and gets it shut down.

~~~
laumars
I'm not familiar with Zulipchat specifically but unless you're running a
community with thousands of concurrent users then you could easily host most
self-hostable chat platforms on a low powered devices (eg Raspberry Pi) on a
home broadband internet connection.

Obviously this is a less than ideal solution, but my point is you're not
reliant on AWS / OVH / Digital Ocean / whoever you choose for hosting.

~~~
mont
You are still reliant on your isp however.

~~~
konspence
Don’t forget your electricity provider as well. Of course you could run a
solar system and mesh WiFi.

~~~
jstanley
Even if you run a solar system with mesh WiFi, you're still reliant on getting
food and clean water.

/s

Incremental improvements are still improvements, even if you still rely on
some people for some things.

------
colanderman
What a great reason to switch to an open-source, self-hosted solution.
Fortunately there exist several:

[http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/](http://sdelements.github.io/lets-
chat/)

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

[https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/)

[https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

~~~
eigenspace
Has anyone here used any of these? I'd love to hear your thoughts vs Slack.

~~~
e_proxus
From my experience with Rocket Chat I'd argue it's about a 30% implementation
of Slack when it comes to features and polish.

My favorite gripe with it is that quickly typing half a username and auto
completing will select the first (or some random) user that's doesn't have
anything to do with what you typed. It's a real pain if you're a fast typist.

------
yholio
Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": you data, business, money, most
intimate secrets and livelihood is at the whims of a foreign corporation that
will stop at nothing if it means 2 cents more on their bottom line, or gets
them on the good side of a government entity.

You have no rights, you have no intrinsic human valuu and you have no means to
fight for yourself.

~~~
ryanmercer
>Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud":

If you don't hold it, you don't own it. HN types seem to not get this, at all,
they think companies should indefinitely preserve all their data and make it
available on demand, no matter what, in-perpetuity. The MailChimp thread
yesterday now this one and the gods help you if you suggest people backup
their data regularly instead of relying upon a 3rd party to always have it
available for them.

If you don't hold it, you don't own it.

~~~
ryandrake
Remember yesterday’s thread from the guy who lost his MailChimp account
suddenly? Nobody learns, and we’re going to keep reading these articles over
and over while “cloud” is still a thing.

------
malloryerik
This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team
of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network
effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case.

Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the
side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting
fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.

~~~
malloryerik
If the sanctions demand this, then the sanctions are outrageously unethical.
If the sanctions don't explicitly demand it and banning ethnic Iranians is
just "erring on the side of caution" then yes, sorry, but Slack is being
outrageously unethical. Even if the sanctions do demand it, to me this is a
reason to seriously consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like
Canada, the EU, Switzerland, etc., or proudly face the fine.

What's the alternative? Just hide your Iranian/Persian colleagues and friends
under the digital rafters? It's plain wrong, and I refuse to be on that side
of history. If Slack needs to risk a massive fine then that's their duty, so
yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court. To be honest, doing anything
else is unpatriotic as well as unethical.

~~~
thinkloop
> consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU,
> Switzerland

I wouldn't put Canada in the same company as the EU or especially Switzerland,
Canada is generally very happy to play ball on these matters.

------
gingerlime
A couple of our employees from Syria also got blocked today. They were using
Slack from Syria though.

EDIT: I don't understand why they ban/block the _account_ rather than "simply"
block access from IPs from the country. This seems really strange and
overreaching.

~~~
jstanley
> They were using Slack from Syria though.

This doesn't excuse anything. People in Syria are people too.

This is similar to how people were calling for websites to block access to
Europe over the copyright thing. The internet is a place where you don't even
need to _have_ a nationality. It is a place where we can all exist as pure
thoughts. Why are we letting politics fuck it up?

~~~
danso
The Syrian ban comes from a U.S. federal sanction. Not arguing that the
sanction is right, or that Slack is correctly implementing its adherence, but
this is not a similar situation to people calling for a boycott to make a
point.

~~~
gingerlime
Yes, I can imagine it's hard for Slack to ignore those sanctions, but it does
appear overzealous to ban individual accounts after having logged-in from
Syria/Iran, instead of implementing a country ban from accessing slack. The
latter would be far simpler from a technical standpoint, and I would imagine
just as compliant with the sanctions.

------
rostasteve
When a company gets large or important enough it realizes that it has to
follow some inconvenient laws.

In the US there's OFAC ([https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-
structure/offi...](https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-
structure/offices/Pages/Office-of-Foreign-Assets-Control.aspx)) which lists
individuals and entities that companies cannot do business with. Implementing
these rules is a nightmare for companies so they use a 3rd party services
which produce a huge number of false positives. Middle eastern names tend
result in many false positives.

My guess is that Slack is scrambling to clean house ahead of the IPO and they
don't have a user friendly way of dealing with this. In fact most companies
don't. This is the same crap that bites people who inadvertently end up on no-
fly lists with no way to get off.

Don't like this? Call your representative. Build a better way to implement
OFAC and similar laws.

------
mirimir
So is this really an accurate title?

It seems most likely that Slack has geolocated IP addresses from account
access logs, and closed accounts with hits from sanctioned countries. Perhaps
going back years.

That in itself seems over the top. But it doesn't constitute ethnic profiling.

But if someone has a counterexample, that would be OK too.

~~~
jwildeboer
OP here. I would partly agree. But at the time I posted the link, I only had
examples from Iranian people that are living in other countries using Slack
and getting banned. Now that I have heard more stories about people from Syria
and even one US person, I wouldn't post it again with that description.

I'll leave it to the mods to change the description accordingly, if they feel
inclined to do so.

UPDATE: The mods have changed the description to "Is Slack shutting down
accounts of those ethnically associated with Iran?"

~~~
mirimir
I meant no criticism. I'm just trying to understand what they're doing. And
damn, just the realization that they have access logs going back years is
mind-boggling. If they didn't have the logs, they'd arguably be better off.

~~~
user5994461
It's possible that they don't store access logs, but just keep the login
history with time and location.

It's a lot less data and it's very useful to help with some customer issues,
or legal matters like this.

------
rdl
If they are just deleting accounts where someone logged in from a treasury-
barred country’s IP, I wonder what happens if you BGP hijack a small amount of
that address space, somehow get admins or high profile users to connect via
this (run WiFi? Some kind of proxy?), and then observe the chaos.

~~~
samstave
Or if a data breach allows for account data to be stolen, then one can spoof
access attempts from such IPs and seek to DOS the account access.

If the removals are automated, then the most vulnerable accounts would be
those of slack employees - or slack investors?

~~~
true_religion
I don't think it's an access attempt that matters but actual access. You need
to login via the API, not simply try and fail to get access.

------
avar
If you work for an American company, get a bug report from a user you know to
be in Iran against an open source project you work on during company time and
fix it as a result, can the company be considered to be engaging in commerce
with Iran?

~~~
InGodsName
Direct exchange of value has to take place.

In this case no, because fixing that bug in your project doesn't benefit him
specifically.

~~~
tremon
But direct exchange goes two ways. Fixing a bug in your project does benefit
the project specifically.

------
giancarlostoro
From a technical standpoint what they're saying is if your IP matches any of
these countries, we cannot allow you on our services. It's got nothing to do
with ethnicity if a Puerto Rican guy from Orlando goes to Iran and gets
banned, it's all about the IP not the person.

Seems they might want to tone down their bans starting from the moment the
policy came to be vs doing it from the dawn of Slack's time, not sure how the
policy is written and I'm not a lawyer so maybe they went off from legal
advise.

~~~
bostik
This would be perfect opportunity for some enterprising gray or blackhats to
wreak havoc.

We know people reuse passwords. I'm sure there are a lot of weak accounts
known, or at least suspected. So... if you had a large number of compromised
slack accounts, and a complete lack of morals, you could log in with each of
them to Slack through Iranian/Syrian proxies.

If Slack are indeed shutting down all accounts that have _ever_ logged in from
Iran or Syria, the above could be a brutal denial of service. Followed by a
massive PR s##tstorm.

Disclaimer: I don't advocate doing anything like that. I just point out that
there might be a way to weaponise the backfire...

------
mimi89999
I believe that the only party that suffers from those sanctions are actually
the populations living in those dictatorships who don't have a say about who
is their leader. Who does actually benefit from them and who do they really
harm?

~~~
kakwa_
I frankly never quite understood the extremely high stance against Iran.

Iran has not really stage any offensive wars since 1856 (and most of the XIXe
century wars were in fact to recover/maintain control over the Persian Empire
which was slowly eaten by the Russian and the UK).

Since 1940, Iran was constantly meddled with by foreign powers, first being
invaded during the WW2 by the Allies and the Soviets, with the Soviet
reluctantly leaving the country after 1945.

Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed by the MI6 and the CIA
because of "precious Oil". A "Pro-Western" dictatorial government was was put
in place. This regime was of course brutal but also at odds with the
population and its traditions, leading to a revolution in 1979.

In the midst of this revolution, Irak, another "Western backed" dictatorship
tried to profit from the chaos to invade the country which lead to costly a 8
years war leaving ~1 Million people dead. This war is probably the last high
intensity conventional war between 2 roughly equals and relatively developed
countries to date.

And then in the 2000, it has seen two countries at its borders being invaded
by historically hostile powers. And then these countries collapsed into chaos
(And I'm even forgetting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80ies).

And lately, after lengthily and complex negotiations, an international accord
was signed, just to be thrown out of the window 1 year later by the US, the US
then bullying other signatories into not abiding by said accord.

No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they
want the Bomb to be at peace.

~~~
adventured
> Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed

Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was appointed by a dictator. The
only part of that process that was even slightly democratic, was indirectly
via Majlis vote. The people of Iran never specifically elected Mossadegh.

> No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they
> want the Bomb to be at peace.

How does being at peace square with constantly calling for the genocide of
Israel across decades and very aggressively funding terrorism & militias? The
Iranian people have been protesting their military adventures in Syria as one
recent example. Iran is every bit as dirty as the US and Russia when it comes
to such activities over the decades in the Middle East.

~~~
EB-Barrington
Mossadegh was appointed Prime Minister, by the Shah, after a nomination from
the Iran Majlis (Parliament). The system of representative democracy that
allowed his appointment is similar to many countries around the world today,
where the people do not select the leader, the people vote for the members of
Parliament, who in turn select the leader (such as Australia).

The Shah carried out the appointment, only after the democratically elected
parliament members nominated Mossadegh in an overwhelming majority vote).

This could be considered "slightly more democratic", only if you consider the
Australia to be "slightly more democratic" than a dictatorship such as North
Korea.

I'm not going to attempt to untangle your final paragraph, only to say you
have made some very large claims without any sources to back up your claims.

------
jwildeboer
OP here. Dear mods, you have now twice changed the description, which I
understand. But would it be too much to ask to have an indication that shows
that someone who is NOT the OP has changed the description? The way it is
currently worded are simply not my words and I have no way of showing that.
Could potentially be bad for me.

~~~
paraditedc
You'd have a better chance shooting them an email. Contact is at the bottom.

------
underyx
The user says he's connected to Slack from an Iranian IP address 6 months ago.
That's likely the reason Slack was able to pinpoint him.

~~~
thecatspaw
So if you once log in during a holiday trip to iran your account gets blocked

~~~
andybak
Iran's been on my list of "wanna go" destinations for a while (Food and
architecture mainly). Looks like I'd have to choose between that and having
any connection with a US based company. Great.

~~~
grecy
Everyone I have ever met that has been to Iran absolutely raves about it. I've
never met a single person that didn't extend their stay, and doesn't rate it
as hands down the best country they have ever been to.

It's very, very high on my list. But if you have an American or British
passport you currently can't go without an escort.

(I'm an Overlander, I drove AK-Argentina and am now driving right around
Africa. I've met 200+ people that have been to Iran)

~~~
underyx
This sounds a bit interesting, extending trips doesn't sound like a common
occurrence, but you say you met 200+ people that did just that?

~~~
grecy
Oh, extending is super-common. Once you're in a country it's really easy to
extend your visa, even if was hard to get in the first place.

I extended in Angola when getting a visa there was hard, I extended it in
Mali, Zimbabwe, just looked into it in Ethiopia, etc.

Of course, as Overlanders we have our own vehicles are I'd say 50% of us are
not time limited [1], so we just stay as long as we want in countries we like.

[1] NOTE: Many of us - me included - are money limited, not time limited.

------
asl19dev
OFAC's General License D-1 provides Slack with exemptions to offer their
services even to users based in Iran:

(a) Effective February 7, 2014, to the extent that such transactions are not
exempt from the prohibitions of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions
Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 560 ("ITSR"), and subject to the restrictions set
forth in paragraph (b), the following transactions are authorized: (1) Fee-
based services. The exportation or reexportation, directly or indirectly, from
the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located, to Iran of fee-based
services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Intemet,
such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of
photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging.

[https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran_gld1.pdf)

------
jeswin
As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility
is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as
terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups.
9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

~~~
ethbro
Iran is an easy enemy for the US government to offer to its citizens.

Because of the fairly harsh anti-US rhetoric circulated by the Iranian
government to its citizens since the revolution (itself because of our
previous support of the Shah and current support of Israel) for purposes of
maintaining power, it's easy to say "Look, Iran hates America."

The Shia / Sunni distinction is largely lost on the average American.

And just as a personal note, almost every Iranian I've met in the US has been
an awesome person. They've got a fascinating history and culture.

~~~
rayiner
To be completely fair about the last point, immigrants you meet in the US are
not a representative sample. I say this as an immigrant myself. The
Bangladeshis and Pakistanis I’ve met in the US are educated and relatively
liberal, having gotten through our immigration filters. But the beliefs and
attitudes of people back in the country are totally different. For example,
American muslims are slightly more liberal than americans as a whole on
homosexuality, and 60% of Americans say society should accept homosexuality.
In Pakistan it’s 2%: [http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-
on-hom...](http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-
homosexuality))

Also relevant:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiM...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiM2aSRw67fAhXHpFkKHUYGAhYQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.radiofarda.com%2Fa%2Fshiraz-
mp-accuses-rouhani-suppressing-iran-
history%2F29558964.html&psig=AOvVaw2WossgQlvRLbpJ4tYATlJX&ust=1545399294800903)

~~~
selimthegrim
(Some) Pakistani-Americans I’ve met who’ve grown up here have told me that my
parents should be executed for being Ahmadis once an Islamic State has been
established (but graciously offered them a one time chance to repent). So much
for the immigration filter.

------
bborud
I think this highlights the precarious situation most people find themselves
in today when it comes to communication channels and data that is being stored
in the cloud. We tend to assume that we have rights and that wrongs will
eventually be righted. But in practical reality this isn't necessarily true.

Speaking of which, are there any open source alternatives to Slack which
anyone could recommend?

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
Zulip chat is open source, free, can be self hosted and there is no limit on
the number of chat messages. Zulip even has a usable mobile client and a
healthy user community. Their support is excellent. Also Zulip has proper
threading of messages to avoid notification fatigue. Much better workflow even
it's otherwise almost identical in terms of features.

There is also matrix (riot.im) which is fully decentralized though the UX
still needs a lot of work last time I checked.

~~~
bborud
After some searching I discovered
[https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/). Anyone have experience
with this?

------
hashemian
Me and some of my colleagues are also Iranians living abroad, and this morning
our account was deleted! We were already thinking to move to a self-hosted
solution (rocket.chat likely), and this is a good reason to prioritize it.

------
bad_user
This happened to our cofounder as well.

His Slack account was blocked today, with that same message.

The crazy thing is that he's Irish and living in the EU, with no actual ties
with the countries being mentioned.

He does travel for business purposes outside of Europe, but again, not in the
listed countries.

~~~
natch
Ireland, Iran, common mixup. /s

~~~
ryanmercer
We have people confuse it in my office actually, new hires will just assume
Ireland is 'IR' not 'IE' and enter stuff into the system as country of origin
'IR' which throws off all sorts of red flags in our system, similarly when
they see 'KR' as country of origin they freak out thinking it's North Korea
not South Korea.

------
mcnesium
This is why we all should not be using these kinds of services, at least in a
production setting. We should run our own services based on open source
software, federate them, share and improve them, and never depend on any third
party.

------
duxup
"originating from" is an interesting phrase as far as the internet goes and
people's mobility.

Is that when the account was first used? Majority of use related to IP?
Something to do with the email address?

~~~
duiker101
I would probably guess it's geolocation at time of registration.

~~~
icebraining
He says he created the account in Canada:
[https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041)

------
shaan7
There is Mattermost [https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/)

------
ya3r
First off, as many know, this is not a single incident. This has happened to
many of us (including me) from "sanctioned" countries. (I am from Iran, but
live in Germany)

But this makes me think. Many of the services I use are from US companies.
Most notable are: Gmail (Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.), Github,
Dropbox, Trello and Toggl. Should I be worried? Should I actually start
switching away from these services before they close my accounts and remove
all my data without notice?

~~~
ants_a
Toggl is not US, it's from EU. But even as an European I feel uneasy when
dealing with US companies, because the political landscape there seems to be
quite unhinged.

------
onetimemanytime
Internal communication: "Hi John, We need to ban users from Iran, NK, Cuba,
Syria or else we'll be ruined by Treasury Department.*

Not a conspiracy, IMO, just taking shortcuts to be "better safe than sorry."
So what a few thousand users are incorrectly banned? We'll restore many of
them one by one but at least we'll be fine with the US Gov. Plus, depends on
what the government says "users" mean. If you used Slack in Iran...what's
Slack to do?

------
craigsmansion
It's mildly satisfying to play the world's tiniest open-source violin[1]
again, but nothing will change, HN outrage notwithstanding.

Unaffected orgs will just keep on using slack, as will many affected orgs, and
Free alternatives and irc will be mocked and laughed at by next week for being
inconvenient and old in comparison to yet another proprietary solution, or
even slack itself.

If you rely on communication, and you don't control your communication, you
can't rely on that communication.

There'll be a reminder in 2025.

1\. [https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/) (and it really should be a
Free Software violin now. If you ever wondered about the difference outside of
licenses: this is it.)

------
momentito
Disclosure: ChatGrape.com CEO

We are based in the EU and can offer an embargo-free and on-prem capable
environment.

------
stunt
As far as I remember Slack does not ask/hold any information about your
nationality. I wonder if he created his account when he was visiting one of
the listed countries and for some reason, Slack is just using that information
to block accounts.

------
Ensorceled
Sanctions are a very blunt instrument; sanctions will always harm people we
like, indeed often the very people we want to help with the sanctions.

You can disagree with the idea of sanctions based upon this, but this is how
sanctions work. Companies need to comply with sanctions and the repercussions
of not complying can be severe.

I'm not sure WHY Slack chose this method to respond to the sanctions, nor why
they've chosen to do this at time. Slack may have received a shoulder tap from
a US agency that forced their hand or their legal department got cold feet.
Until we know for sure, this seems like a overly cautious approach but not
some kind of nefarious scheme.

~~~
gdy
"the very people we want to help with the sanctions"

That was funny.

------
benparsons
Self-hosted, decentralised solutions such as Matrix
([https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org)) are available, and allow you to
keep control of your own access and data.

~~~
NoGravitas
I keep hearing people complain about Matrix's interface (Riot), but the little
I've used Slack, it looks exactly the same except for the color scheme.

~~~
benparsons
Riot is currently undergoing a lot of UX work, the results look really
promising. Take a look in January for an update.

Disclaimer: I work on Matrix (should have made that clear in the parent
comment too)

------
dgellow
An iranian friend, living and working in Berlin, also lost his accounts today.
He received the same email and lost access to all his accounts, no prior
notice. That's really infuriating.

------
bobbybroadcast
This appears to be the state of play. User is accused of doing violating TOS
and gets auto banned. No appeal, no recourse, no way of getting their info.
Imagine kicked out of somewhere, like a hotel, based on an accusation and then
not even being able to get your stuff. While property law allows us
opportunity to have our possessions returned, requiring the other party to
return it to us, in cases like these however, who owns the text messages,
emails, photos? How can we retrieve them?

------
lazerwalker
The vast majority of Slack accounts are tied to a paying employer[^1], and yet
most of the responses we've seen are individuals (justifiably!) upset they've
been barred access from their work tool. I'm curious to see how companies
respond to Slack disrupting the productivity of their salaried employees.

^1: Well, hmm, I wonder what % of active instances are on a free tier, but
that's a separate unrelated question

------
arendtio
If you want to know what protocols are real alternatives, take a look at the
second last column (IETF):

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/)

(I didn't make that spreadsheet, but found it quite interesting when it was
posted on HN a few weeks ago)

------
thrw9090
If anyone did notice the hashtag on his twitter. Iranian permanent residency
applicants in Canada are being thoroughly scrutinized before granting them
permanent residency in Canada and hence the hashtag. AFAIK, citizens from a
couple of nationalities undergo this vetting process by Canadian immigration
before being granted permanent residency in Canada. This is probably a call to
get attention for the campaign.

------
twunde
This is almost certainly the result of adding a new compliance product feed
(which may have false positives). I remember having to implement one for an
acquired ecommerce site. The feed by it's nature was prone to false positives
(it matched on name). However, there was an internal appeals process with the
ability to override whereas if this is new to slack they are probably
overwhelmed

------
mimi89999
Why don't you use a free alternative as Matrix? If you self host, then you are
the only one who controls who your users are.

~~~
icebraining
It's not always your choice, and getting an organization to switch may be
quite hard. Although Slack seems to be trying to help by pulling a stunt like
this.

~~~
u801e
If I were in charge of an organization that used Slack for communication, I
would immediately search for and start using an alternative service which
would be hosted on premises.

------
gerbjet
This is really concerning. Slack is starting to worry us like FB has continued
to do. The good news is there are alternative services that I see that can do
most, if not all of what Slack does with better security, privacy, and
performance.

I’m getting fed up with paying for a bloated Electron app with nice colors and
now improved with tracking of it’s users.

------
geff82
By the way, I am currently investigating an issue were auto-upload of my
holiday pictures in Iran to OneDrive is somehow not possible. All those
pictures are location-tagged by my iPhone. Maybe it is just an coincidence
with a bug, but it is strange. I am now in Germany (I am "pure" German), so in
general it should work.

------
threatofrain
In this modern age it seems it's not safe to list anything which might come
back to haunt you, including ethnicity.

~~~
purerandomness
Face recognition will solve that for you.

~~~
andybak
Good luck guessing ethnicity for Iran. There will be many who look less
middle-eastern than your average "Californian with a tan". You'd have the same
problem with most near-east or Mediterranean countries. Being at the
crossroads for a few millennia will do that to a place.

~~~
some1else
This holds up if you imagine the profiling as done by humans. However, neural
networks already surpass human ability in some computer vision tasks. The
features the trained models come up with can go way past what we might
consider visual likeness. The algorithmic method might eventually become
99.999% efficient at racial profiling with the help of something as ridiculous
as fingerprinting eyebrow strand distribution & orientations. The right way
forward is to fully consider the ethical implications when shaping these
policies, regardless of technological ability.

~~~
pjc50
> 99.999% efficient at racial profiling

Next on HN: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Race

------
lordnacho
1) Is there a way to sync your Slack with a Mattermost or similar? It's nice
to have both public and private in case one dies.

2) The US has a reputation for being quite aggressive with certain things.
Can't be surprised if some firms take steps that seem overkill. Not that it
makes it better, but rocks and hard places.

~~~
cevn
There is an unofficial solution called matterbridge but it's not great. I
would just recommend taking regular backups of your slack data, you can export
it to Mattermost.

------
mmjaa
Its quite simple: don't use Slack. Its a walled garden and there will always
be incidents like this for as long as people don't appreciate that these
companies don't have any commitment to you, for as long as you are just using
their services for free.

Use IRC. Its not nearly as walled off.

------
elmo2you
1\. The export control regulations apply to companies and individuals who do
business with any of the sanctioned countries.

2\. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is
forbidden by law.

In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the
other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control
regulations do not apply.

If the user has business with Iran outside of Slack's platform, Slack can not
invoke the export control regulations to justify their action.

Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids
discrimination based on ethnicity.

If the USA fails to punish Slack for it's illegal behavior, and Slack
successfully avoids prosecution elsewhere, other country have the right to
block access to Slack completely, from within their own borders.

Personally, I think US citizens should be more concerned with what their
government does, especially to and with other parts of the world. For
eventually, the will feel the consequences of those actions on their own skin.

~~~
gruez
>2\. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is
forbidden by law.

>Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids
discrimination based on ethnicity.

There's no evidence that's the case. Most likely it's done based on IP
geolocation. A white (for lack of a better term) Canadian who was using slack
in Iran would probably be banned as well.

>In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the
other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control
regulations do not apply.

Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the
alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying
"I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

~~~
elmo2you
> Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the
> alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying
> "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

The export regulations apply to business. In order for it to apply, there
needs to be proof of a business relationship. Simply being Iranian or having
non-business related communication with Iran, which is the only thing IP
geolocation on its own indicates, does not warrant invoking this law.

------
Danielalonso91
I'm always impressed by the real discussions that take place here in the HN
comments section. They're characterized by civility, respect, and intelligent
perspectives; great community to be a part of, for sure.

------
maze-le
Great time and reason to migrate to a self-hosted mattermost solution. Time
and time again these incidents show that centralized services cannot be
trusted with company service infrastructure.

------
revskill
This kind of treating user accounts and data like a Recycle Bin should be
abandoned. If you , Slack , could do whatever u like with the things you don't
create, you're a trash, too.

------
RadioSC
We have the same problem in Ukraine. Today many Ukrainian account was blocked
with the reason "originating from Crimea region of Ukraine". But they are not
from this regions ...

------
rrdharan
I wonder if this was one of the things that shook out as they started IPO
prep. I imagine there's some checklist provided by the banks they're working
with and this was on it?

------
cronix
Use a VPN? We Americans have to use them to get around dumb laws and help
protect our privacy, too. There is almost always a digital solution to digital
problems. Bypass them.

------
startupdiscuss
I think Slack is sending a clear and strong message: use a VPN!

~~~
u801e
Or use open source alternatives instead.

~~~
jpeeler
This! Open source helps protect users' freedoms.

However, I am sympathetic when you're talking about software that needs to be
run server side. Because in that case, you almost always have to deploy and
manage the infrastructure yourself (or know somebody to do it that you trust),
which is just too much for most people.

With chat specifically, you might be able to avoid self-hosting by using
something that supports federation. Personally I'm rooting for Matrix to
establish itself here.

------
Iv
If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in
any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US
states?

~~~
user5994461
Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions.

We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff
to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One
shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police
showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions.
Couldn't sell there.

~~~
lostmyoldone
The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in
embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but
everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise -
associated with embargoed countries.

If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it
could conceivably fall under discrimination laws.

But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country
specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view?

Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone,
even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to
be applied broadly.

Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could
kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse.

If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting
embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably
not the intent of the embargo.

~~~
user5994461
Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with
regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever
connected from a restricted location.

There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence
over pretty much everything else.

Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to
Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about
Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.

------
darioush
So for those of you who live in uninitiated bubbles, realize the same literal
thing can happen to your bank accounts at any time.

------
taude
Without spending a lot of time on this, I don't believe that Slack just used
ethnicity to ban this account. Could the OP have been using VPNs or something
that led Slack to believe his IPs were coming from IRAN? I don't see Slack
doing anything differently, and all this "outrage" seems to be unfounded at
this point.

Edit: one thought, hopefully they can open a new Slack account with IPs
originating in Canada and Slack can copy/move/reinstate the account.

~~~
taude
Not sure why the downvotes? It's pretty obvious there's a lot of jumping to
conclusions in the first 10 comments (that's all I read) on that Twitter
thread, basically implying that Slack is using ethnicity to close the account
and not something more technical like an IP address that was tied to Iran at
one point in time.

It seems from reading other comments that this Slack team was created when he
was in Iran from an Iranian IP. And they used originating IP when the team was
created and not access to determine. We can debate the proper technical
solution to base the rule when you apply it across your SaaS-based application
at world-scale, but implying that Slack did this on race is pretty absurd at
this point.

------
soheil
That’s pretty much the point of sanctions, what did you think was going to
happen, people of sanctioned countries getting a medal? The point is to put as
much pressure on those countries as possible and there is no better way to
pressure a country than to pressure its people to force a change. The question
should be whether or not Iran should be sanctioned. But if you agree that it
should then this is an example of a perfectly reasonable outcome.

------
sathishmanohar
One more reason to do away with government regulated companies and move
towards decentralized softwares

------
awaywopassd
This why, at least, Techsavy people should avoid depending on centralized
services for their work.

------
glup
Is this because of export controls on encryption? Or something else?

~~~
klmr
It’s not export control, it’s a US trade embargo:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran)

------
debt
Root causes analysis here should be yield some interesting results.

------
novon
I’m sure there are thousands of Iranian Americans working on Slack that also
visit their relatives back home at some point, including ones working at Slack
HQ. How far can this logic go?

------
nykolasz
I would expect a lot more from Slack.

------
senectus1
whelp, guess I'll never promote slack in my company.

------
ajsb85
Use Telegram :)

------
perfmode
How can we coordinate to stop this from continuing?

------
cauldron
Does Chrome need to ban Iranian users to?

------
InGodsName
Few days ago i was in UAE and saw fishing boats carrying gadgets like iPad,
iPhones and Macs into Iran.

Obviously, looking from outside you can't tell that this rotten boat is
carrying expensive gadgets. I saw this because my friend owns a wharehouse and
he had to put some of his stuff into same boat.

Funny thing is Tinder is available in Iran and i used it there when i was at
home for vacation.

------
AsyncAwait
Saudi Arabia is a large investor in Slack. Probably doesn't mean much here,
but you never know.

~~~
dade_
United States sanctions: [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx)

~~~
AsyncAwait
What do U.S. sanctions have to do with somebody who isn't in Iran?

Is Twitter, Google, Microsoft behaving the same here?

P.S. On a side note, if these sanctions are really about 'punishing the
regime', blocking mediums for Iranians to speak on isn't a way to do it, but
what do I know.

------
samstave
Serious question: Would this have anything to do with selecting Goldman Sachs
as the handler for their IPO?

~~~
gaius
What are you implying?

~~~
samstave
Goldman Sachs has been the central player in major financial scandals in the
past, proven documented, well known.

I don't think they do anything completely cleanly, so I question the thinking
for Silicon Valley Unicorns using them to head their IPOs

Greece the 2008 crisis buyouts 1MDB

Look at the 1MDB scandal, where we are only now seeing charges coming against
GS - The 1MDB and Greece scandals are very similar in the sense that GS had
information regarding both situations which they knew was criminal, but chose
to profit from it as opposed to prevent it. Knowing that their profiting would
outweigh the consequences.

They are the antithesis of "in good faith" actors - and as such, I personally
question the integrity of the companies and company founders who put their
IPOs in GS' hands.

Look at FB... we know where their integrity lies.

I am reminded of the "How I built This" episode on Slack, and how it grew and
the values of its founder -- which I now take with a grain of salt given that
they are going with GS.

------
perfmode
I wonder if anyone from my company (a unicorn) has been shut down.

------
DonHopkins
Now if Twitter would only ban people working for Russia, even when they live
in the White House.

~~~
jessaustin
Are you disappointed that someday we're going to stop killing children in
Syria?

(Note: we haven't actually stopped yet.)

------
philip1209
Throwing out an idea for one reason this could happen: Perhaps Slack received
a legal order that only specified names (such as some kind of watchlist), and
they had no choice but to comply.

------
mfer
Can someone point to a change in US sanctions that would have caused this now?

Can someone explain an interpretation of US sanctions that causes situations
like this?

This could be US sanctions or it could be a companies poor reading of them.

------
z3t4
This is probably just one of many PR attempts from Slack. All closed accounts
are probably owned by their PR team, or they prefer buzz over users. What
about Google, Facebook and Twitter, are they closing down Iranian accounts too
!?

------
natch
He’s kind of an odd one. I think this might be about his citizenship, not his
ethnicity. And his behavior:

[https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12)

The notion that the US conducts military operations “only” to exploit oil is a
popular one but it’s not very nuanced thinking, and dances close to extremism.
I haven’t spent the time to read what else this guy espouses but I suspect the
ethnicity card is being played to hype up some drama when there are other
issues at play.

------
aplummer
This guy is straight up lying, with no intention of correctly his false claim
this is racial targeting.

Even after confirming with a white person banned for using slack while
visiting Iran, he continued to claim in the thread it is racial.

Reality: he was banned for using slack with an Iranian IP.

Whether or not that’s export control overreach / unethical / bad business not
my point, it’s clearly very different to ethnic targeting.

------
matt_the_bass
FYI US export controls generally apply to nationals of an embargoed country
even when they are outside of that country. Is the person in question an
Iranian national or does slack have reason to believe? Then they are required
to not provide their export controlled product, service or knowledge. The us
government does not offer a “graceful” stoppage of service allowance.

Yes this is annoying but probably not slacks fault.

~~~
jstanley
This is still Slack's fault as well.

It's unethical to enforce unethical rules, even if the government tells you
to.

~~~
matt_the_bass
I think it is Slacks fault for not being in compliance with export laws
originally.

Their non-compliance is fact.

Whether or not you consider that law to be ethical is opinion.

I was not stating an opinion, merely stating fact. I was not trying to start a
discussion of politics. I appologize if I was misunderstood.

------
darkerside
[https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041)

This is almost certainly related to the user's travel to Iran, and not any
form of racial profiling. Everybody please remain calm.

It's emblematic of today's society that at the first mention of ethnicity,
everybody grabs their anti-racism pitchforks. I agree racism is a problem, but
let's treat it appropriately. We need to look at it more like drug addiction
today (an invisible psychological problem that can be healed), and less like
drug addiction 30 years ago (a moral failing that must be punished).

~~~
darkerside
Really? Unexplained downvotes? At least do me the courtesy of explaining why.

------
zeroflow
As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate
the sanctions by using slack while being in iran.

Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack
terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of
service.

For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state,
that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contries.

~~~
jwildeboer
He lives and works in Canada. I cannot see how this is violating canadian
laws.

~~~
dpark
It sounds like he accessed Slack from an Iranian IP at some point in the past.
Though I’m not sure that’s actually breaking the law.

------
dade_
Smart move. This shouldn't surprise anyone that makes a point of avoiding US
prosecution and jail:

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-
frau...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-fraud-faces-
up-to-30-years-in-prison/)

[https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-
violation...](https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-violations/)

~~~
jstanley
Banning people because of the country they were born in is not "smart", it's
abhorrent.

That the US, supposedly the leader of the free world, is threatening
prosecution and jail to those who want to treat everyone in the world equally,
is a ludicrous state of affairs.

~~~
InGodsName
Country is made up of its citizens.

If a country does smth, citizens are punished.

This has been case throughout the history.

Alexander took the losing kingdom's citizen as slaves and American bombed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, again the citizens of Japan who were living there.

~~~
jstanley
So when were the citizens of the US punished for their government bombing
Japan?

EDIT: Also, in a different comment in this thread, you claim to be Iranian.
Why are you defending sanctions against the country that you are from?

~~~
msla
> So when were the citizens of the US punished for their government bombing
> Japan?

About the same time as Japanese citizens were punished for the Bataan Death
March, the Rape of Nanking, and the Korean Comfort Women.

Besides, since when is it appropriate to "punish" a country for winning a war
in which it was aggressed against?

