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A former Gizmodo writer changed his name to ‘Slackbot’ and stayed undetected for months

There’s something a bit different about this Slackbot icon… | Image: Tom McKay

Hiding on Slack isn’t all that hard, apparently; you just have to pretend you’re a bot. That’s what IT Brew’s Tom McKay did when he left Gizmodo in 2022, and he went undetected by the site’s management for months.

In a post on X, McKay shared some screenshots of the new “Slackbot” persona he took on after he officially left Gizmodo. He also confirmed to The Verge that this silly prank really happened.

If you’re not glued to Slack for most of the day like I am, then you might not know that Slackbot is the friendly robot that lives in the messaging service. It helps you do things like set reminders, find out your office’s Wi-Fi password, or let you know when you’ve been mentioned in a channel that you’re not a part of.

it’s been long…

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