1. I don't want to get involved in that, even if I'm based in Uruguay and they'd have a hard time suing me.
2. What they could do is put resources to detect the extension and block it. We could start a mouse and cat game that they'd win... I don't have their resources to invest in it. After all, all I wanted was to solve Slack for me, and that would make it harder.
Well done on what you have achieved, keep fighting the good fight!
It sounds like the plugin author isn't located in the US, so this may be moot, but countries colonized or invaded by European countries or the US often have similar legal systems.
I doubt they'd win in a fair fight, but I also doubt the plugin author can afford to put up a fair fight.
The biggest thing is Terms, which will almost always exclude any tampering of any kind, client or server side. These agreements are usually upheld in the US. So that's hurdle #1.
The CFAA isn't really obviated by client-side modifications, because the CFAA allows essentially arbitrary definition of "unauthorized access" and "exceeding authorized access". If they tell you to cease and desist, most judges won't believe that you can reasonably claim that you didn't know your access was unauthorized. The CFAA makes unauthorized computer and network access illegal.
There's a third barrier here, which is copyright law. The "RAM Copy doctrine" is the dominant interpretation, and it states that even the temporary copies that exist within RAM are sufficiently tangible to qualify for copyright protection, meaning you either need a license from the rightsholder or you need to prove fair use just to load the content.
The only way I can see that that wouldn't affect client-side applications would be if they access everything through a proxy without ever actually loading the copyrighted content directly, i.e., by injecting and accessing the DOM through the browser. But you'd still have to convince the judge that the extension itself is not infringing on the work it alters, which seems unlikely -- it would likely be considered a derivative work.
Again, I'm not a lawyer. Maybe all this is wrong. You shouldn't rely on it. But the situation is not as dreamy as people think. BigCos keep this bully pulpit relatively quiet because it makes it easy for them to crush upstart competitors who may offer a "move your profile from $X" feature. With the data locked up, the users never move.
Honestly, if they do that they're idiots and, longer term, slack is a dying product: they'd be much, and I mean MUCH, better served by investing those resources in improving the product.
Congrats on your Stackoverflow job :)
You wouldn't happen to have any recommendations for hiring web-devs here in Uruguay for a small startup? It's CRAZY HARD.