Hi everyone!

Ben Ford :grinchsmile:

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give you a heads up that Perforce has forcibly seized control of the #Puppet Community Slack. They've banned me and removed the Community team and all moderators. This means that there is currently no spam or harassment moderation. It means that the community no longer has the ability to limit monetization. And it means that Perforce has direct access to your account info and no longer needs to go through the Community team when they need sales and marketing leads.

Emelia 👸🏻

@binford2k @lkanies how does someone "seize control" of a slack organisation?

Luke Kanies

@thisismissem @binford2k I think in this case it probably means “removed other admins”. They probably always had admins on the slack, and now they’re the only ones.

Ben Ford :grinchsmile:

@lkanies @thisismissem They convinced Slack to do it. The community team was me as primary owner, 4 community owners, and about 8 admins with moderation privileges, both community and employees. I've been banned and everyone else has been removed from their roles.

Luke Kanies

@binford2k @thisismissem well that’s fun. Seems pretty crazy that slack would go along with it.

Ben Ford :grinchsmile:

@lkanies @thisismissem I'm shocked, actually.

Personally, it's pretty wild too. I've never been banned from a community and the Puppet community has only ever banned one real person before today.

Luke Kanies

@binford2k @thisismissem yeah, sounds like a massive and crazy shift. I’m sorry. I wish it were not happening, or that there were something I could do to help.

Emelia 👸🏻

@lkanies @binford2k that sounds like a hostile takeover facilitated by Slack, it'd be worth reading their terms of service as well as privacy policy, because it sounds very risky to trust & safety if a slack organisation can suddenly be reassigned owners at Slack's whims — entirely ripe for social engineering.

They might argue that "Puppet Community" infringed on Puppet's trademarks, but even then, the response isn't simply to hand over control, but rather force a name change.

Juha Autero

@thisismissem @lkanies @binford2k You would expect terms of service (and privacy policy) to protect Slack in this situation. Or Slack at least veryfying they are not breaking terms of service.

Emelia 👸🏻

@jautero @lkanies @binford2k indeed, but it seems like a huge breach of trust to just hand over an entire slack workspace & all member email addresses to an organisation not affiliated with the workspace.

As it is, this is likely a GDPR issue, if not worse.

Chris "Not So" Short 🇺🇦

@thisismissem @jautero @lkanies @binford2k Trademarks can be invoked to gain ownership, I suspect.

Emelia 👸🏻

@ChrisShort @jautero @lkanies @binford2k even then, it shouldn't give automatic ownership, instead it should force a name change. Giving ownership means handing over personal information to a company no one consented to having it.

Chris "Not So" Short 🇺🇦

@thisismissem @jautero @lkanies @binford2k Sadly, I feel like a letter from a lawyer has a lot of sway here in the US when it comes to matters of trademarks. Slack has no reason to push back.

Emelia 👸🏻

@ChrisShort @jautero @lkanies @binford2k and a letter from the lawyer of a member of the slack who's private data has now been handed over to a company for a GDPR violation could cost them significantly. You can't just transfer PII like that without consent.