[hnauz]

That's not what happened at all, that's why it's hard to take him seriously. He makes it look like Slack went out of their way to look at all of their users and check of what race they are to ban those who are Iranians, when they just made a geoip check.

[raesene9]

If they're just doing GeoIP checking, wouldn't it have made more sense for them to just block access from those countries, which would be an inconvenience to their users, instead of retroactively removing their accounts?

[aroberge]

> That's not what happened at all ... when they just made a geoip check ...

It sounds as though you have access to data that the rest of people on HN do not. Would you care to share your source? Are you certain he would not have been banned by Slack if he were not an Iran citizen (just Canadian) but would have (possibly) used Slack when travelling to Iran?

[blindwatchmaker]

Assuming that for some reason I should take your word over his, banning for "having logged on in Iran at some point" is, effectively, banning for ethnicity.

[hnauz]

It only is if you think someone who has ever set foot on Iran is an ethnic Irani. You just have to look at this HN thread to see that is false, as this problem also applies to other embargoed countries.

[blindwatchmaker]

> It only is if you think someone who has ever set foot on Iran is an ethnic Irani.

We're both adults here and I assume we both can realize that splitting these hairs doesn't make my statement that banning everyone that's ever logged on Iran from slack is, in effect, a ban on Iranian ethnic users?

[briandear]

No it’s not. There are millions of Persians in the US that haven’t been to since the 1970s. Those are of the same ethnicity as someone living in Tehran. There are millions of Persians living in Europe as well — also ethnic “Iranian” who would be unaffected by a geo-ban.

So no, a ban based on signing in from a specific locale has zero to do with ethnicity or race.

[hnauz]

On one hand, yes, but it's fair because it's an embargoed country. I mean, it's not fair in my opinion, but Slack is forced to abide by the laws of the United States. This approach they've chosen of banning everybody who's ever connected from Iran is stupid and ham-fisted and they are being rightly ridiculed for it.

On the other, the author of the thread is accusing Slack of profiling him racially. What he's implying is that a human proceeded to stalk him around the Internet, on social networks, etc to check if he is an actual Iranian and ban him based on that. And that is a very, very grave accusation.

[briandear]

I am not sure you know what ethnicity means. “Iranian” isn’t an ethnicity.

Banning anyone who has ever used Farsi in Slack, now that would be a bit closer to banning for ethnicity.