I feel like I'm on Reddit, not a site ostensibly catering to _computer professionals and experts_.
And also, all they've done is give the corporation the technical ability to do something they've always been able to do -- read your private chats. It's just that before they had to do more work to do it, but they've always had the right to do it, regardless of what Slack's privacy policy said.
I dunno, it’s hard for me to have much sympathy. It’s a rough lesson to learn if you are in your mid 20s and maybe didn’t know any better, but anyone who has been around for any length of time should know better than to put certain things in writing. That is, like, a life skill, not some Bay Area social contract.
This is rewriting the privacy policy we agreed to retroactively, and it's not OK in my mind. I don't say anything stupid on company slack, but in principle this is a bad move.
It's not that I necessarily wrote anything that would be a problem if it was disclosed (as others have pointed out, there were other workarounds to get DMs if the company really wanted them) -- it's just broken trust.
Access to DMs would've been par for the course if it had been the way Slack worked all along, but it's really disappointing to see them change it retroactively, insofar as that's what's actually happening.
The consensus here is of course correct: never trust anything done on company equipment, whether it's owned or rented (as in the case of a Slack channel) to be private, even if the owner of the rented property has given certain assurances. Money makes the world go 'round.
And also, all they've done is give the corporation the technical ability to do something they've always been able to do -- read your private chats. It's just that before they had to do more work to do it, but they've always had the right to do it, regardless of what Slack's privacy policy said.
If you've ever worked for a large American company, you know that nothing you do on company equipment or with a service the company pays for is ever private, and you should never assume it is.
I'll be honest, I always thought Slack DMs were viewable by the admin. As a Slack admin myself, I always assumed I had that ability. Never used so, I never found out I was wrong, but just always assumed it was there.
To me this is a no-op: Anyone who worked for a large American company should have assumed that this ability was always there or could be there in the future, or at the very least, your employer could have always required you to log in and show them your DMs.