An Apology and an Update

Re:An Apology and an Update by toefraz on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:24PM (#18738518)

How did they not block based on nationality when they literally blocked a nation?

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Re:An Apology and an Update by alangpierce on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:52PM (#18738629)

For context, one of the original reports of this was from (I believe) an Iranian-American with US Citizenship living in the US:

https://twitter.com/aaomidi/status/1075621119028314112

You might read that and infer that Slack is somehow tracking the national origin, ethnicity, or race of all of its users, which would be much fishier behavior than IP-based blocking. They're explicitly saying that they don't do that and that they don't have that information.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by gaius on Saturday December 22, 2018 @12:48AM (#18739160)

They're explicitly saying that they don't do that and that they don't have that information.

But they did do it, so what does that mean...

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Re:An Apology and an Update by briandear on Saturday December 22, 2018 @01:12AM (#18739236)

Did they? Or did they ban people associated with specific IPs?

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Re:An Apology and an Update by vageli on Saturday December 22, 2018 @01:36AM (#18739313)

Are the sanctions against doing business with Iran nationals or anyone with an Iran IP address? I would imagine the sanctions are in place to prevent trade with Iranian nationals.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by EForEndeavour on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:33PM (#18738560)

I see it as a technically true statement: they blocked users who looked like they were connecting from within an embargoed nation, regardless of these users' actual nationality.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by hprotagonist on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:29PM (#18738540)

i am an american national and i go to canada. my access to netflix changes for reasons that have nothing to do with my nationality (what passport i have), and everything to do with what nation i’m in.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by munchbunny on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:43PM (#18738603)

They likely blocked by whether you ever signed in from a blocked nation. That's not necessarily the same as blocking any users who would qualify as exporting software to a blocked nation, which is also not the same as blocking everyone whose nationality matches said nation.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by berbec on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:29PM (#18738542)

They don't care about the nationality of the person, just the location of the IP address.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by bdibs on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:29PM (#18738544)

I think they meant nationality as in the person's nationality, they were blocking solely based on an IP based location.

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Re:An Apology and an Update by russell_h on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:30PM (#18738546)

They were blocking everyone in that nation, regardless of nationality.

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