Slack, now a public messaging platform, showed its versatility shortly after rolling out cross-organizational direct messaging feature.
In order to fight against the possibility of users being able to easily send abusive messages or harassment, it’s disabling the option to send a message alongside an invite.
The concern was that if other users know your email address, they would be able to inundate someone’s inbox with whatever kind of harmful messaging they chose.
“After rolling out Slack Connect DMs (Wednesday), 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. 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,” Jonathan Prince, the company’s vice president of communications and policy, told The Verge.
“Slack Connect’s security features and robust administrative controls are a core part of its value both for individual users and their organizations. 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. As always, we are grateful to everyone who spoke up, and we are committed to fixing this issue.”
A Twitter employee, Menotti Minutillo, first expressed concerns about no opt-out protections because Slack Connect bypasses filters and protections you may use.
There have been new concerns popping up, too, such as being able to view whatever Slack groups individuals are a part of, but a Slack spokesperson confirmed to verge.com these fears are unfounded, “as that information is only displayed to the person accepting the invite as a method of determining what Slack workspace they’d like to accept the invitation from.”
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