I don't get why you didn't just ask. Of course you would've been invited. I figured you were there already.
I wasnt aware of that kind of organization.
All slacks are not by their nature "secret slacks".
We have been running a community slack where you can get your invite via a simple webpage. There are solutions for that.
They're just expensive chats where membership is limited because of their cost.
Not exactly true. I believe, if you need history (5k messages or sth like that) then it becomes pricey per user. However, there are also great free (free as in beer) alternatives to Slack.
This is only feasible for free slack which quickly becomes unusable if the user base grows too large (because paid slack requires paying a fee per user, per month, so unless you have unlimited funds or people are willing to pay to join, you can't open it up to everyone). In fact early in its history Steem had such a free slack and that is exactly what happened.
I don’t buy this excuse, but hey, it’s your paid Slack, your rules.
None of these are my paid slack.
But I can tell you what I said is exactly what happened to the public Steem slack a few years ago, and the community was much smaller. It isn't feasible.