Slack moved quickly this week to create changes to its public direct messaging feature following a backlash highlighted the prospect of harassment from people sending abusive messages.

The Slack Connect DM feature, unveiled in October , on Wednesday became generally open to paid users of the platform. It allows Slack users to deliver an invite to someone beyond their Slack “workspace,” which, when accepted by another party, enables direct messages to become exchanged in the chat application.

The invite is delivered to the recipient’s email with a button to “accept” the invitation. To Slack’s changes prior, the sender could add a text to the recipient within the invite also.

However, Users&nbsp twitter; quickly described the way the feature could possibly be abused, having the ability to deliver harassing messages. Because the invite emails are usually sent from the single feedback@slack.com accounts – blocking them means all Connect DM invites are then marked as spam.

Following the backlash, Slack said it could longer allow messages in order to be put into Connect DM invites simply no, preventing abusive ones through being contained in the invite email thus.

“After rolling out Slack Connect DMs today, we received valuable feedback from our users about how exactly email invitations to utilize the feature may potentially be used to deliver abusive or harassing messages,” Jonathan Prince, Slack’s vice president of policy and communications, said within a  Twitter post on Wednesday.

“We have been taking immediate steps to avoid this sort of abuse, you start with the removal these days of the capability to customize a message whenever a user invites you to definitely Slack Connect DMs.

“We made a blunder in this initial rollout that’s inconsistent with this goals for the merchandise and the typical connection with Slack Connect usage. As always, we have been grateful to everyone who spoke up, and we have been focused on fixing this presssing issue.”

The feature is area of the Slack Connect platform  unveiled last June ; it enables to 20 companies to communicate within a shared workspace up.

Slack admins must “opt-in” to utilize enable Slack Connect. Enabled once, the Connect DM feature is usually started up by default, though it could be disabled for users by transforming permissions settings to avoid the invites from becoming sent or obtained. Admins may also restrict the delivering of DM invitations to “verified organizations” only.

In accordance with Slack assist center web site , admins may disable the Link DM feature for customers by changing permissions configurations for DMs to avoid the invites from getting sent or obtained. Admins may also restrict the delivering of DM invitations to “verified organizations” only.

Slack

Admins shall be in a position to restrict the behaviors of members from partner organizations, such as for example inviting others and installing apps.

A Slack spokesperson mentioned that as although it isn’t possible to block individuals currently, the company proceeds to explore new methods to “empower our users and present our admins more granular tools to do this on harassment or elsewhere unacceptable behavior.

“That said, if harassment is happening on our platform as well as your employer struggles to intervene, we encourage one to e mail us via Slack’s Help Center to record your concerns and we’ll investigate and take appropriate action,” the spokesperson said.

Slack plans to increase usage of Connect DMs from paid customers to all or any free users later this season.  

“The power for Slack users on a compensated intend to direct message others extends the talents and the options in streamlining the flow of work,” said Wayne Kurtzman, a extensive research director at IDC. “It may be transformative with an effective launch still.”

On Wednesday was “uncharacteristic” for Slack the start of the feature, said Kurtzman, and – with the business awaiting regulatory clearance because of its $27.7 billion acquisition by Salesforce – might have been hampered by restrictions of an organization being in a pre-acquisition mode.

“An individual base has been waiting with this feature for a few right time, as well as perhaps Slack got the reaction it had a need to properly roll this feature out with the privacy elements that folks expect,” he said.