Slack looks slightly better than the average dotcoms[*], but a skim of
even their ToU shows what are likely showstoppers for a CIO or IT
manager who does their due-diligence. Even moreso if you're not paying
Slack, and may consequently have less legal standing, and no SLA.
https://slack.com/terms-of-service
https://slack.com/privacy-policy
Without getting into all the pertinent industry practices and societal
implications (it gets much, much worse than Slack), let me try to narrow
down this particular situation into a bite-size assertion: gratuitous
sending of even (what have been) ephemeral communications, to
third-party data services, especially given the current dominant dotcom
business models, is not good practice. By "gratuitous" here, I mean:
one gets little utility in exchange for the (what should be a) chilling
effect of putting companies' microphones atop the water cooler. (It's a
water cooler, does not need additional chilling, ha.)
I don't like to get into these tangential discussions, but I also don't
like to see students learning bad practices.
(In case anyone asks whether Freenode is also a third-party... Lilo was
an acquaintance before he co/founded Freenode, and I advised him a bit
when he first asked about setting up an IRC network as a non-profit.
This was before dotcoms really got out of hand, and there were
traditions of conduct by IRC server operators (not that there wasn't
drama), which haven't been lost entirely. Today, one could cut out this
third party, by running an organization-controlled `ircd`, but I don't
think this particular third party is gratuitous, it's one of the most
benign, and moving the channel now would get messy if you want to take
all the current members with you and redirect future members from Freenode.)
(Incidentally, I've been working recently on ways to monetize startups
without selling-out privacy of users, nor having artificially captive
users for leverage or just perceived market cap. It's become
increasingly difficult, and unusual. Mainly because your competitors
get investment and/or revenue by doing questionable things not in users'
interests (most of the things, without the users' knowledge), and
consequently have funding to operate/produce "free" services/products.)
[*] Though Slack has the usual third-party cross-site tracking Web bugs,
which is a bad first sign that's very easy and quick to check. Almost
everyone does at least a few gratuitous Web bugs, even when they make
lots of noise about ostensibly respecting privacy. I think some bad
practices have become so common (and promoted by those who benefit),
that developers now do them without even understanding what they're doing.
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