Dibs On Stuff
The Slack and Discord bot that helps your team collaborate with shared servers, test environments, AI capacity and everything else.
Launch
The Privacy Comparison:
Dibs On Stuff vs Queue Bot
Hand-written by Alex Lance, 14th August 2026
Dibs On Stuff vs Queue Bot
Hand-written by Alex Lance, 14th August 2026
Every Slack app you add to your Slack Workspace opens another potential
doorway for sensitive company information to escape.
However not all Slack apps are created equally when it comes to the permissions they require and the information about your company they can access.
Let's look at the privacy considerations for two similar people-queuing Slack apps: Dibs On Stuff and Queue Bot.
However not all Slack apps are created equally when it comes to the permissions they require and the information about your company they can access.
Let's look at the privacy considerations for two similar people-queuing Slack apps: Dibs On Stuff and Queue Bot.
Permissions side-by-side
It should be immediately apparent: these two apps do not have similar
requirements. Dibs On Stuff requires very few permissions.
| Permission | Dibs | Queue Bot |
|---|---|---|
| Join public channels in your workspace | yes | yes |
| Send messages as bot-user | yes | yes |
| View information about your identity | no | yes |
| View your email address | no | yes |
| View your Slack avatar and Slack workspace's basic information | no | yes |
| View basic information about public channels in your workspace | no | yes |
| View basic information about private channels that the bot has been added to | no | yes |
| View messages and other content in direct messages that the bot has been added to | no | yes |
| View the name, email domain, and icon for workspaces that the bot is connected to | no | yes |
| View people in your workspace | no | yes |
| View messages that directly mention the bot user in conversations that the app is in | no | yes |
| Add and remove pinned messages and files | no | yes |
| Add shortcuts and/or slash commands that people can use | no | yes |
| Add steps that people can use in Workflow Builder | no | yes |
What does it actually mean?
The table indicates that an app like Queue Bot can access the full names,
email addresses, titles, phone numbers, pronouns and employment start dates of every
single person in your Slack Workspace.
Or if there's a conversation that Queue Bot has been added to, then it can read every single message in that conversation. One of these apps has permission to read those messages and one of them simply does not.
Can this information be monetized? Is this information valuable to your competitors? You betcha. It is only by the good grace of a Privacy Policy that the app publisher elects not to sell it.
Or if there's a conversation that Queue Bot has been added to, then it can read every single message in that conversation. One of these apps has permission to read those messages and one of them simply does not.
Can this information be monetized? Is this information valuable to your competitors? You betcha. It is only by the good grace of a Privacy Policy that the app publisher elects not to sell it.
The crazy thing is...
You really don't need all those permissions to provide a queuing service.
There is a mountain of functionality that Slack makes available to all apps by default, and being able to peer into each and every user account is not necessary to run a queuing app.
For instance Dibs On Stuff knows who is in each queue by using Slack User IDs. It is the frontend Slack chat window that converts those User IDs back into human-readable names.
There is a mountain of functionality that Slack makes available to all apps by default, and being able to peer into each and every user account is not necessary to run a queuing app.
For instance Dibs On Stuff knows who is in each queue by using Slack User IDs. It is the frontend Slack chat window that converts those User IDs back into human-readable names.
This privacy-devouring world is hungry
Or as Signal president Meredith Whittaker puts it "the surveillance
economy" is a real part of all of our lives.
Many of us surrender our private information, not because we want to, but because understanding what data is being shared is intentionally confusing and opaque.
We are often not well equipped to refuse these access requests, and it is often the case that we are roped into an all-or-nothing type of transaction.
It is a hallmark of this era that it is difficult to be proactive with your private data, and we don't want Dibs On Stuff to be a part of that problem.
Many of us surrender our private information, not because we want to, but because understanding what data is being shared is intentionally confusing and opaque.
We are often not well equipped to refuse these access requests, and it is often the case that we are roped into an all-or-nothing type of transaction.
It is a hallmark of this era that it is difficult to be proactive with your private data, and we don't want Dibs On Stuff to be a part of that problem.
Change the default
We want sensitive data transfers to be brought into the light so
that organizations can detect pitfalls in their partnerships.
Perhaps articles like this, that attempt to differentiate privacy can be a small example of this objective.
Dibs On Stuff is one of the few Slack apps specifically engineered to require nearly nothing in terms of permissions and privacy compromises, and we hope others begin to see that as a competitive advantage too.
Perhaps articles like this, that attempt to differentiate privacy can be a small example of this objective.
Dibs On Stuff is one of the few Slack apps specifically engineered to require nearly nothing in terms of permissions and privacy compromises, and we hope others begin to see that as a competitive advantage too.
