News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada. Parent comment

Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by pjc50 on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:54AM (#18724860)
It's the dystopia of the film Brazil: someone makes a typo in a database, someone else's life is dramatically inconvenienced, and it's impossible for them to access any means of redress.

> Is this just how the US ticks right now?

Yes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by rvense on Thursday December 20, 2018 @09:30AM (#18725132)
Maybe Slack just proved that you actually don't have to pick between malice and incompetence.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by eponeponepon on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:00AM (#18725408)
"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by beobab on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:17AM (#18725546)
My dad used to say: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained with stupidity", but I love yours too.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by wastedhours on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:40AM (#18725794)
Otherwise known has "Hanlon's Razor" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by starbeast on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:10AM (#18726102)
Which is great for politeness, but largely rubbish for working out what people might be up to, given that people not only regularly disguise malice as stupidity, but in some cases find it highly entertaining. Hence the existence of - https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by CalChris on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:50AM (#18725899)
This is a play on Arthur C Clarke:

  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by toufiqbarhamov on Thursday December 20, 2018 @02:45PM (#18728416)
“But don’t dismiss stupidity.” Is the ending of the better variation of that quote I think.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by tigershark on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:13AM (#18725514)
I love you.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by walterbell on Thursday December 20, 2018 @09:57AM (#18725387)
Malcompetence?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada by munchbunny on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:49PM (#18727773)
This is also the future of blind faith in a few companies that control substantial things you depend on personally/professionally. You don't really think about how much damage something like Slack (or god forbid, Google) could do to you by shutting down your account until something like this actually happens.

Add to that the dark side of being "data driven," which is that stories like this one are just part of the 1% of edge cases. These companies also try to move away from actual customer service as much as possible because human labor doesn't scale as well as automation, so you'll fall through the cracks as long as the news that it happened to you doesn't get enough press to make it worth an engineer's or VP's time.

I know that sounds extremely cynical, but having been on the inside in situations like this, I saw how these dynamics converged despite good intentions. Stuff like this is why sending engineers through front-line customer support rotations tends to dramatically motivate engineering teams to make quality of life improvements. Once you lose the detachment that indirection from the user gets you, suddenly those 1% cases feel more important.

[ Parent | on HN ]