Slack Will Begin Deleting Older Content From Free Workspaces (webpronews.com) 18
An anonymous reader shares a report: Slack announced a significant change to its platform, saying it will "begin deleting messages and files more than one year old from free workspaces on a rolling basis." Slack's prior policy involved keeping messages and files for the lifetime of a free workspace, although accessing that full history required switching to a paid account. Under the new policy, Slack reserves the right to delete content from free workspaces after one year.
Good or Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suicide King (Score:4, Interesting)
Telling everyone "pay us or we'll start lobotomizing ourselves" is a brilliant move!
Playing with the King of Hearts, you know it ain't really smart.
Re: (Score:2)
One of my previous jobs used Slack and the most annoying part was when someone left or was fired. Once their account was gone so was the entire history. I lost a lot of good information in conversations with people.
Re: (Score:3)
They had their workspace set up incorrectly OR were purposefully purging those messages. I can see -- without using my admin powers -- all of my message history with former employees. I can likewise see their participation in channels. If I use my admin powers I can all of their stuff.
Expect services to be a circular buffer (Score:2)
This is just training everyone to expect any service, slack, email, github repos, libraries, streaming services, social media messages to be a short time window of information with older data deleted every year.
It lets people continually update history to whatever they want it to be since original sources all disappear.
Re: (Score:2)
Repeat after me: Slack is not a persistent information store.
If you are relying on any chatting client to retrieve information more than a week old, you're doing it wrong. Change your processes so any information that will be valuable in the future is copied or reprocessed and stored in a proper persistent dedicated information store where you will find it when you need it. Or at the very, very least, regularly export the data to some persistent store you control.
Free Doesn't Mean Forever (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That's missing the point. I don't think anyone is arguing they're doing anything they don't have the right to do. We're just saying it's a stupid move because the whole point of allowing free users is to be able to add their contributions to the database, making the service more valuable for paying users. It's not a dick move, it's a "stabbing themselves in the hand playing mumbledy-peg" move.
Re: (Score:2)
That's missing the point. I don't think anyone is arguing they're doing anything they don't have the right to do. We're just saying it's a stupid move because the whole point of allowing free users is to be able to add their contributions to the database, making the service more valuable for paying users. It's not a dick move, it's a "stabbing themselves in the hand playing mumbledy-peg" move.
It's hard to say it was a really smart move by the people who used Slack.
I've lost any interest in free cloud storage. Just yesterday, a guy working for me put a lot of documents into Google drive, then left town for a couple weeks. He forgot to give me access to the file folder. I needed the documents yesterday, and he's off the grid somewhere, so not answering email, Google Drive requests, or the Phone.
We be gonna have a short, and to the point conversation when he gets back into town.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I think its a good move for Slack.
Right now free workspaces have all their data stored going back to the start of the workspace - but users can only access the last 30-60 days.
If you sign your workspace up for a plan, then you get full access to your entire history.
If you need something today that you know you posted 3 years ago, then you can sign up today and get that post back. A lot of people actually rely on this (and you saw it with things like Dropbox's unlimited deletion history they used t
Re: (Score:2)
Kinda like how Dropbox and Box are still around but not as dominant in the storage wars as other players have become.
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I personally dont think there will be any mass exodus from Slack.
Re: (Score:2)
The most ethical thing Dropbox ever did was put Condoleezza Rice on their Board of Directors, so they could tell us they're handing everything to the Feds without actually saying they're handing everything to the Feds.
wont buy it anyway (Score:2)
The pressure to buy failed, you can delete the data you won't let me access.
Not *that* different... (Score:2)
I don't honestly think this new policy is that shocking. From the end user's perspective, messages (and files, etc.) on free accounts were effectively only accessible for 90 days. Slack just kept them around indefinitely in case you upgraded to a paid plan, in which case they could be made accessible again. Now it sounds like they're just reserving the right to eventually delete them -- but only after a year (a significant grace period given that, again, you can only see the last three months).
This really d
Zulip to the rescue (Score:1)
I can only recommend the on-site capable Zulip [zulip.org]. We moved our in-house chat years ago onto Zulip and never looked back.