Slack: Difference between revisions
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On September 18, 2025, the UK-based web developer Mahad Kalam, who serves as the Infra Lead of Hack Club's Newspaper group, made a post<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kalam |first=Mahad |date=2025-09-18 |title=Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase |url=https://skyfall.dev/posts/slack |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260102215028/https://skyfall.dev/posts/slack |archive-date=2026-01-02 |access-date=2026-01-13 |website=Skyfall.dev}}</ref> on his personal website Skyfall.dev stating that Slack had contacted Hack Club and increased the fee for the organization's Slack workspace from $5,000 per year to $200,000 per year. According to Kalam, Slack threatened to delete Hack Club's message history and deactivate their workspace if Hack Club didn't pay $50,000 within a week and agree to pay $200,000 a year for Slack services moving forward, as well as other fees. Kalam said that Hack Club had been given no prior notice of this fee increase and that the minimal notice had been "catastrophic" for the organization's ongoing projects. | On September 18, 2025, the UK-based web developer Mahad Kalam, who serves as the Infra Lead of Hack Club's Newspaper group, made a post<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kalam |first=Mahad |date=2025-09-18 |title=Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase |url=https://skyfall.dev/posts/slack |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260102215028/https://skyfall.dev/posts/slack |archive-date=2026-01-02 |access-date=2026-01-13 |website=Skyfall.dev}}</ref> on his personal website Skyfall.dev stating that Slack had contacted Hack Club and increased the fee for the organization's Slack workspace from $5,000 per year to $200,000 per year. According to Kalam, Slack threatened to delete Hack Club's message history and deactivate their workspace if Hack Club didn't pay $50,000 within a week and agree to pay $200,000 a year for Slack services moving forward, as well as other fees. Kalam said that Hack Club had been given no prior notice of this fee increase and that the minimal notice had been "catastrophic" for the organization's ongoing projects. | ||
Kalam shared<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Kalam |first=Mahad |date=2025-09-18 |title=Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase |url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887 |access-date=2026-01-13 |website=Hacker News}}</ref> his post to the forum Hacker News, where the information was confirmed by Hack Club co-founder and COO Christina Asquith. Asquith stated that a few months before this incident, Slack had changed the terms of each user's agreement with no notice or updated contract, and that Hack Club had experienced difficulty in reaching Slack support to clarify or fix the resulting billing discrepancy. She confirmed that the $195,000 fee increase came with no more than a week's notice. The Hacker News post gained more than 3,000 points from forum users. | Kalam shared<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Kalam |first=Mahad |date=2025-09-18 |title=Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase |url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887 |access-date=2026-01-13 |website=Hacker News |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20260102215028/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887 |archive-date=2 Jan 2026}}</ref> his post to the forum Hacker News, where the information was confirmed by Hack Club co-founder and COO Christina Asquith. Asquith stated that a few months before this incident, Slack had changed the terms of each user's agreement with no notice or updated contract, and that Hack Club had experienced difficulty in reaching Slack support to clarify or fix the resulting billing discrepancy. She confirmed that the $195,000 fee increase came with no more than a week's notice. The Hacker News post gained more than 3,000 points from forum users. | ||
====Resolution of Hack Club's fee increase==== | ====Resolution of Hack Club's fee increase==== | ||
Latest revision as of 13:03, 23 February 2026
⚠️ Article status notice: This article has been marked as incomplete
This article needs additional work for its sourcing and verifiability to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues.
This notice will be removed once sufficient documentation has been added to establish the systemic nature of these issues. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the discord and post to the #appeals channel.
Learn more ▼
| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2009 |
| Legal Structure | Public |
| Industry | Communications, Collaborative software |
| Also known as | |
| Official website | https://slack.com/ |
Slack Technologies, LLC (formerly Tiny Speck), is an American software company founded in 2009. they are known for their popular messaging and collaboration platform Slack, catering to organizations and businesses. Slack Technologies, LLC was acquired by the business-oriented CRM software company Salesforce, Inc in 2021. Slack claims to have more than 200,000 paying customers,[1] is used by more than three-quarters of Fortune 100 companies,[1] and offers a messaging platform tailored to government agencies through an instance called GovSlack.
Consumer-impact summary
[edit | edit source]
Incidents
[edit | edit source]This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Slack category.
Unannounced fee increase on nonprofit Hack Club (September 2025)
[edit | edit source]Hack Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for teens interested in acquiring or developing functional coding skills.
On September 18, 2025, the UK-based web developer Mahad Kalam, who serves as the Infra Lead of Hack Club's Newspaper group, made a post[2] on his personal website Skyfall.dev stating that Slack had contacted Hack Club and increased the fee for the organization's Slack workspace from $5,000 per year to $200,000 per year. According to Kalam, Slack threatened to delete Hack Club's message history and deactivate their workspace if Hack Club didn't pay $50,000 within a week and agree to pay $200,000 a year for Slack services moving forward, as well as other fees. Kalam said that Hack Club had been given no prior notice of this fee increase and that the minimal notice had been "catastrophic" for the organization's ongoing projects.
Kalam shared[3] his post to the forum Hacker News, where the information was confirmed by Hack Club co-founder and COO Christina Asquith. Asquith stated that a few months before this incident, Slack had changed the terms of each user's agreement with no notice or updated contract, and that Hack Club had experienced difficulty in reaching Slack support to clarify or fix the resulting billing discrepancy. She confirmed that the $195,000 fee increase came with no more than a week's notice. The Hacker News post gained more than 3,000 points from forum users.
Resolution of Hack Club's fee increase
[edit | edit source]CEO Denise Dresser replied[3] to the Hacker News forum post with an apology, stating the increase was a billing error. Kalam later updated his personal blog post to state that the issue had been resolved and Hack Club had accepted a more favorable deal offered by Slack as a remedy. He stated that Hack Club would also pursue other avenues of owning its own backup data from projects hosted on Slack as a safeguard.
Products
[edit | edit source]- Slack
See also
[edit | edit source]References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About Us". Slack. Archived from the original on 11 Feb 2026. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
- ↑ Kalam, Mahad (2025-09-18). "Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase". Skyfall.dev. Archived from the original on 2026-01-02. Retrieved 2026-01-13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Kalam, Mahad (2025-09-18). "Slack is extorting us with a $195k/yr bill increase". Hacker News. Archived from the original on 2 Jan 2026. Retrieved 2026-01-13.