<story><title>Guide to Slack import and export tools</title><url>https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-guide-to-slack-data-exports</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I hate to tell you this but if you would quit a job for this reason you probably can&amp;#x27;t work in the US. The US has laws about corporate compliance, and it has requirements for things like dealing with sexual harassment. There is no such thing as a &amp;quot;private conversation&amp;quot; that takes place over a corporate network.&lt;p&gt;For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously. If a company gets a complaint of sexual harassment on Slack they are legally obligated to look into it, and if they refuse to the individual managers could personally be held liable for it. This includes situations where the person being harassed isn&amp;#x27;t directly in the conversation- the above example of harassment over slack could have evidence of coordination in a different private channel than the ones the harassment target is in.</text></item><item><author>peterkelly</author><text>If two people want to have a private conversation, they&amp;#x27;ll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.</text></item><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong--it&amp;#x27;s not like I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; to read your messages and very likely won&amp;#x27;t. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that. Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone&amp;#x27;s messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I&amp;#x27;ll say this is still not an ideal solution. I don&amp;#x27;t go into private communications unless I have to, and I&amp;#x27;d rather have the option to review specific DMs &amp;#x2F; private channels than dump everything. I really don&amp;#x27;t want &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;; that&amp;#x27;s more than I care to see. Also, to clarify, I&amp;#x27;m in the US and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated platforms should not be considered private. I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; them to be careful how they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked&amp;#x2F;leaked. With the recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>humanrebar</author><text>&amp;gt; There is no such thing as a &amp;quot;private conversation&amp;quot; that takes place over a corporate network.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a tech issue, cultural issue, and a legal issue, but it&amp;#x27;s harmful that we seem to be forgetting the wisdom of discretion as life become more digitized. If the law or culture says &amp;quot;no expectation of discretion&amp;quot;, they&amp;#x27;re just wrong and likely hypocritical.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s healthy, normal, and appropriate to tell specific things to specific people. If we&amp;#x27;re worried about abuse, there are other solutions to those problems, like letting the harassed share the conversation later, which they can already do, with screenshots if nothing else.</text></comment>
<story><title>Guide to Slack import and export tools</title><url>https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-guide-to-slack-data-exports</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I hate to tell you this but if you would quit a job for this reason you probably can&amp;#x27;t work in the US. The US has laws about corporate compliance, and it has requirements for things like dealing with sexual harassment. There is no such thing as a &amp;quot;private conversation&amp;quot; that takes place over a corporate network.&lt;p&gt;For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously. If a company gets a complaint of sexual harassment on Slack they are legally obligated to look into it, and if they refuse to the individual managers could personally be held liable for it. This includes situations where the person being harassed isn&amp;#x27;t directly in the conversation- the above example of harassment over slack could have evidence of coordination in a different private channel than the ones the harassment target is in.</text></item><item><author>peterkelly</author><text>If two people want to have a private conversation, they&amp;#x27;ll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.</text></item><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong--it&amp;#x27;s not like I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; to read your messages and very likely won&amp;#x27;t. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that. Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone&amp;#x27;s messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I&amp;#x27;ll say this is still not an ideal solution. I don&amp;#x27;t go into private communications unless I have to, and I&amp;#x27;d rather have the option to review specific DMs &amp;#x2F; private channels than dump everything. I really don&amp;#x27;t want &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;; that&amp;#x27;s more than I care to see. Also, to clarify, I&amp;#x27;m in the US and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated platforms should not be considered private. I &lt;i&gt;want&lt;/i&gt; them to be careful how they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked&amp;#x2F;leaked. With the recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>soziawa</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously.&lt;p&gt;Yeah, we&amp;#x27;ve seen that over the past couple months.</text></comment>