Slack, don’t play me like that

recently, i picked up my Android tablet to check on my internet cats, and discovered there was an update for the Slack app. cool, i thought — maybe they’ve fixed some security issue, or perhaps they’ve listened to my minor twitter rants and made the scrollbar a reasonable width — or maybe they implemented that feature i asked for: bulk download and upload of custom emoji from one Slack team to another?! i’m in 8 different teams right now, so this is an important request!

but no. what the app wanted was access to my device’s microphone and furthermore, my voice call record data. now, i know Slack is looking to become the all-in-one enterprise communications platform of choice. and i think they’re well-positioned to do it, and i think it’s a great play. but i have no need or desire for the new voice call/video chat options that Slack wants to offer. more importantly, i do not want to give yet another corporation access to my private data.

in the last few years we’ve seen dozens of seemingly solid and stable corporations lose control of their customer data, and hundreds more abuse it by selling it to unscrupulous marketers or delivering it into the hands of increasingly-untrustworthy federal agencies. i like Slack, but i don’t expect them to behave any differently once they are a public company and bound by the legal requirement to put profit for their shareholders first in all things.

so i’m conflicted. i like this product. i’d like to continue using it. but if i’m forced to open access to my private call data and microphone, i’ll have to make a decision. i know this may be an odd place to make a stand, but there is a difference in my mind between the chat i type in a public channel and the information someone might glean from the calls i make and receive, let alone the potential for abuse of access to the microphone. and sure, i personally believe i have nothing to hide, but just like when Facebook and Google began to require people use their real identities — some folks could be placed in danger if this information became public.

as a new-ish user of Android (yes, i’m the only person in the universe with a Windows phone), i’m told that some later versions allow you to disable an app’s access to individual features and data at the OS level, but this functionality is not available to me at this time.

Slack, please consider making this request (and future requests for data/device access) granular and optional for people who just want to use the fine chat platform you’ve developed. it’s not that i don’t trust _you _— but i don’t trust you.