Slack's threat to coding club: Pay $50k, or we delete data

"Slack sent a nonprofit hacking club for teens a demand for $50,000, payable within a week, and threatened to delete the club's message archive if it did not pay. That horror scenario came to light in a Thursday post by Mahad Kalam, who helps out at Hack Club, a nonprofit that works to run coding clubs at high schools. Slack is an integral part of the org's offline community."

""A few years ago, when Slack transitioned us from their free nonprofit plan to a $5,000/year arrangement, we happily paid. It was reasonable, and we valued the service they provided to our community." On Tuesday, Slack stopped being reasonable. "However, two days ago, Slack reached out to us and said that if we don't agree to pay an extra $50k this week and $200k a year, they'll deactivate our Slack workspace and delete all of our message history," Kalam wrote."

""One could argue that Slack is free to stop providing us the nonprofit offer at any time, but in my opinion, a six month grace period is the bare minimum for a massive hike like this, if not more," he added, before offering the following observation: Essentially, Salesforce (a $230 billion company) is strong-arming a small nonprofit for teens, by providing less than a week to pony up a pretty massive sum of money, or risk cutting off all our communications. That's absurd."

Slack demanded Hack Club pay an extra $50,000 immediately and $200,000 annually, and threatened to deactivate the workspace and delete message history if the club did not comply. Hack Club previously paid $5,000 per year under a nonprofit plan and relied on Slack for community coordination among high-school coding clubs. The short notice forced staff and volunteers to scramble to update systems and migrate tools. Hack Club chose to move to the open-source platform Mattermost. The organization described the demand as coercive from a large company and said the sudden change was catastrophic for its programs.

Read at Theregister