Slack’s IPO filing shows it fears a Facebook-style privacy disaster

Image: BOB AL-GREENE / MASHABLE

Slack knows a lot about you, and it realizes that could one day be a serious problem.  

The company behind the messaging service used by media organizations, tech behemoths, and Fortune 500 companies around the world published its plan to go public on April 26, and the document paints a detailed picture of the company’s hopes and fears. One fear, in particular, is of note: a Facebook-style privacy disaster. 

Buried deep in the “risk factors” section of the prospectus — along concerns of hackers and market changes — lies the explicit worry that a severe privacy misstep by the company could result in grave harm to the business. No one, after all, wants to trust their personal data to a company that repeatedly betrays their trust. 

“Since many of the features of Slack involve the processing of personal data or other data of organizations on Slack and their employees, contractors, customers, partners, and others,” reads the prospectus, “any inability to adequately address privacy concerns, even if such concerns are unfounded, or to comply with applicable privacy or data security laws, regulations, and policies, could result in liability to us, damage to our reputation, inhibition of sales and to our business.”

In other words, if people perceive Slack to show a Facebook-like dismissiveness of their privacy, the company’s reputation — and subsequently its business — will suffer. 

“Any actual or perceived failure by us to comply with privacy, data protection, information security, consumer privacy, data residency, or telecommunications laws, regulations, government access requests, and obligations in one or multiple jurisdictions could result in proceedings, actions, or penalties against us and could harm our business and reputation,” adds the prospectus. 

Slack, of course, has a very different business model than Facebook. However, by its vary nature, the company’s servers host the secrets and personal data of its customers. Should Slack become dismissive of the trust its customers have placed in it, it rightly realizes that businesses will start to look elsewhere.

Notably, Slack does not end-to-end encrypt communications — a fact that could theoretically be exploited not just by hackers but by shady third-party apps pulling data. If that sounds far fetched, you need look no further than the Cambridge Analytica scandal — in which a Facebook personality quiz app gathered data on users and their friends — to see the potential privacy ramifications. 

Thankfully, the prospectus shows that Slack is very much aware of this risk, and clearly has no desire to follow in Facebook’s troubling footsteps. Let’s hope that doesn’t change any time soon.