The workplace messaging app Slack, which seeks to “reinvent work,” did an about face Wednesday after users complained a new feature took a step toward reinventing harassment.
The latest addition to Slack Connect, announced Wednesday, aimed to “replace email outside your company” by letting users send direct messages to any Slack user, anywhere. There was just one, rather large problem with this lofty goal: Many Slack users didn’t want to receive DMs from anyone, anywhere, and feared the new service included the potential for abuse.
After some consideration, it seems Slack agreed.
“After rolling out Slack Connect DMs this morning, we received valuable feedback from our users about how email invitations to use the feature could potentially be used to send abusive or harassing messages,” Jonathan Prince, Slack’s vice president of communications and policy, explained over email. “We are taking immediate steps to prevent this kind of abuse, beginning today with the removal of the ability to customize a message when a user invites someone to Slack Connect DMs.”
In order to DM anyone, users were first prompted to send an invitation email to that person. Which makes sense, in theory, except for the fact that the invitation emails from a Slack email domain could contain custom — and potentially threatening or harassing — text. And because those emails would be coming from Slack itself, they would be more difficult to block.
“Anytime a platform decides to create new and unexpected linkages between its users, trust and safety considerations must be worked in as part of the design,” Jackie Singh, a former senior cybersecurity staffer in the Biden campaign who was personally targeted last year in a social media-tied doxxing campaign, explained over Twitter direct message. “The way this feature has been released does not indicate sufficient thought was put into the user experience at scale.”
Other potential Slack users shared their concerns on Twitter.
“My first reaction to this news was ‘oh, another way men can harass women on the internet,'” wrote the Wilson Center’s Nina Jankowicz. “Did @SlackHQ talk to ANY women before rolling this out?”
“Completely unsurprised that Slack either didn’t predict or didn’t care that this new feature could be used for unavoidable abuse and harassment,” wrote Kat Cosgrove.
“you can filter these emails out by from: address and subject line”
yes but I shouldn’t have to do that in order to avoid being harassed via a work tool
— Kat Cosgrove, seriously this time (@Dixie3Flatline) March 24, 2021
In response, hours after it announced the new feature, Slack backtracked — altering Slack Connect in such a way to, at least partially, address users’ concerns by removing the ability to add custom text to emailed Slack Connect invites.
“We made a mistake in this initial roll-out that is inconsistent with our goals for the product and the typical experience of Slack Connect usage,” wrote Prince. “As always, we are grateful to everyone who spoke up, and we are committed to fixing this issue.”
Notably, as Singh explained, this doesn’t address the broader issue that Slack Connect presents.
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“I also think part of the reason why many people are complaining about this is that the innate separation between Slack Workspaces was always a core functionality,” she wrote. “This move subverts that in a way without accounting for potential consequences towards users, especially those who are most at-risk for targeted harassment.”
Reinventing work, it seems, it a messy process.