Communications platform Slack quickly remedied a loophole in their new Slack Connect DM feature that allowed for potential harassment to be sent through chat requests.
The company rolled out a feature Wednesday that allows users to send direct messages to people outside of their own organization with just a request. However, Connect requests can include "arbitrary text," Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO, told Cheddar and that opens the door for harassment.
The oversight went viral after a Twitter user pointed out how easy it was to send not one but multiple harassing messages through requests.
"This was a little bit of an unforced error on our part, and unfortunately because the feature was about direct messaging, there was a lot of totally understandable confusion, conflating the process for inviting," Butterfield said, explaining that the oversight had been permanently removed.
The feature's intended goal is to allow for easier communication between professionals who work closely but for different organizations. Butterfield said the company began developing the idea during the coronavirus pandemic as the increase of users called for solutions toward simpler communication.
"We ended this year with 74,000 paid customers using Slack Connect. That's up 130 percent from last year, but the density of the network has increased tremendously as well. That's grown 245 percent," he noted.
This comes as the company waits for the U.S. Department of Justice to greenlight the sale of Slack to Salesforce. Butterfield said he's confident the deal will be approved, particularly because the company has no overlapping products and is a partner to every software maker globally.
With at least half of its paid users coming from outside the United States, Salesforce will help the company reach more customers through its expansive network, Butterfield said. When it comes to elevating the business, he said the company looks to be a leader in revolutionizing the workplace of the future.
"It's not just we get to sell more software, we get to transform the way that people work," he said.
If the deal with Salesforce happens to be denied by the DOJ, which Butterfield doesn't believe will happen, he said the company is already trending in the right direction and continued growth is essentially imminent.
"Look, this last year was obviously huge for us. We crossed a billion-dollar runway, we had more than a billion dollars in billings, we had 43 percent revenue growth, and four straight quarters of free cash flow profitability," he said. "We also saw enormous acceleration in the number of paid customers. We added 46,000 this year compared to 22,000 last year and those customers are the basis for the future growth."
For Butterfield, the pandemic was a eureka moment as he recognized the workforce had to become a "digital-first" industry and shake the concept of what the traditional corporation looks like as the world emerges into life after COVID.
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
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It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
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