Hi everyone!

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.