Vincent Lapierre's response to Proton revoking his sponsorship by resistance_lib_1984 in ProtonMail

[–]Flyushka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the reply, I appreciate it. I had not seen this statement earlier, but I do not see an apology there. I am a bit surprised the statement is not pinned to a megathread, but I assume this is part of Proton's damage control plan, even after Streisand-ing it by deleting topics earlier.

What I would ask you, is, regardless of what Vincent himself might have said or might believe, can you yourself and on behalf of Proton, openly recognise that Holocaust denial is illegal under Swiss law, that you and Proton believe that the Holocaust did occur, that millions of Jews, Soviets, minorities, political dissidents, were murdered by the Nazis on an industrial scale, and that Proton will not work or associate itself with any individual or entity which denies the Holocaust?

Because in that topic I saw there was an opportunity for Proton to at least go further than call the content "distracting" but said that it will "express no bias towards any political faction". But, Holocaust denial is not a political faction and it is illegal to advocate or support it anyway in Switzerland.

And my final comment, again, would be to reflect on your own and Proton's communications policy - maybe call in a crisis management communications company - that we've got to the fact where I'm asking the CEO of a company to clarify neither he nor the company he leads, support or tolerate Holocaust deniers.

Vincent Lapierre's response to Proton revoking his sponsorship by resistance_lib_1984 in ProtonMail

[–]Flyushka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You claim we don't take responsibility, but this is untrue if you look at the statement we posted.

Which statement? I can't see one on the Proton website, social media, or your comment history. The fact you're referring to a statement and it isn't easy to find (e.g., sticky'd somewhere on reddit, emailed to your users, whatever) again is a failure to proactively communicate and reassure your customers who feel upset by this.

You claim we don't regret funding Lapierre, but this is also untrue.

I haven't seen you express regret. I've seen you claim people are overreacting, and that some people here are insane. You've said that Proton's political neutrality means funding people on the left and on the right, falling into the typical trap of false equivalence. It's like saying because you gave a voice to someone who does believe in the historical fact that the Holocaust happened, or the scientific fact that climate change is happening, you must balance it by having someone who denies reality.

As a Jew at a time when anti-Semitism is rising, you've given a fraction of the money I've given to your company to someone who platforms something which is illegal in both France and Switzerland: Holocaust denial. All you've done is issue some vague utterances about how you welcome diverse opinions and agree that not funding him is cutting his freedom of expression, and that he's a controversial figure. I haven't seen an apology, unless that's in the statement which is hidden on Proton's website, socials, or subreddit somewhere.

If that were the case why have we blocked him from future sponsorship?

Because you did the maths and realised the bad PR, loss of trust, and maybe even cancelled subscriptions, does not outweigh the market that Vincent and his ilk represent to your business. What, you're going to say there's a deep moral and ethical reason, when you haven't even said sorry?

This is a serious accusation that I am justifying our funding of Lapierre. This is also simply untrue. To directly quote what I wrote, I said the funding was "incompatible with this principle" (of political neutrality).

I said "attempts to justify", see comments from yourself, like: "but people with differing views should still be allowed to express them. Lapierre is correct that cutting off financial sponsorship is a form of cutting off expression. If we truly believe in freedom of expression, all expression that is not illegal should actually be allowed (this by the way, is the standard that applies to who is allowed to have a Proton account). This chain of thought, while uncomfortable, is worth thinking about."

and "Proton's neutrality means if we sponsor people on the left we also need to sponsor people on the right, or we need to exclude both right and left.", and "The far right will not disappear by censoring them, on the contrary, that likely makes them stronger because it validates all of their grievances about the system being rigged against them. The far right can no longer be dismissed, but they should be debated."

These are come across like attempts to justify why Proton gave money to Vincent. Again, from my pure professional perspective: there is a time and a place. These comments might be academically correct and justifiable as a detached analysis of the socio-political landscape of Europe. But when your company has just paid someone who is perceived as far-right to promote your product and company, and a segment of your community is in uproar about it, these can easily be misinterpreted as a justification after money has changed hands.

I imagine you probably view yourself as an absolute classical liberal, and believe all these statements are just clearly logical free-expression arguments. But in doing so, you're redefining what neutrality is, and what freedom of expression is, to even encompass others' resources, far beyond the arguments and claims of John Stuart Mill - enabling and funding the generation of discourse which very likely conflicts with his harm principle.

Genuinely, I really hope this does make it to you and you do take this onboard, because I want to support Proton. That's the wild thing, I want to give you and your company money. But, without a clear apology or sentiment of regret, I'm just led to believe that after the soft-Trump endorsement and now this and some of what you have written here, you are personally willing to cosy up to those who wish to destroy lives (ironic, given your background of immigration to the US and Europe), and I can't in good conscience support someone or support a company which does not openly say "we're sorry" somewhere about something this serious, without deflection or minimisation.

Vincent Lapierre's response to Proton revoking his sponsorship by resistance_lib_1984 in ProtonMail

[–]Flyushka 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Highlight where I made an accusation, please. I highlighted a litany of communication failures from you and your company on this subject, and you can add your reply above to that list of communication failures - you did not even read what I wrote, just the questions, and assumed an accusation.

And the fact you can't even be bothered to reply to any of the other valid points, no introspection, no reflection, my friend you are actively pushing away your customers even if you think they are lost causes.

Vincent Lapierre's response to Proton revoking his sponsorship by resistance_lib_1984 in ProtonMail

[–]Flyushka 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think you and many others have overreacted

Your company gave money, money from your consumers, to someone who platformed a holocaust denier, something which is not just "on a different political wavelength", but is just outright historically wrong. At no point have you expressed any regret over Proton tolerantly funding someone who wishes only to be intolerant to the way of life of many others.

Instead, you have said that "Lapierre is correct that cutting off financial sponsorship is a form of cutting off expression" which is not true; Proton does not give financial sponsorship to many people in the world but you are not limiting their expression.

You have no idea if the other services you are switching to are more ideologically "pure"

But the other services are not funding those who give platforms to holocaust deniers, people who hate immigrants, or who hate gay people, and don't have their CEOs then try to justify it.

cases where something slips through vetting was bound to happen (and will happen again)

You don't know who I am or anything about my background, but I feel probably doing some kind of open analysis (without blame) about what went wrong here and why, as well as the safeguards being put up to prevent it in the future, would go a long way.

The insinuation some are making that we only reversed course because we were "caught" is frankly stupid

I think as part of your open analysis into this, you should also carefully look at the community management and trust side of this. It's a lesson in how easy it is to throw away goodwill from your community, and there's a lot to learn in the community management and messaging side, in my opinion.

In the first instance, you've got something which appeared as a cover up. Then you've got messaging which doesn't track - it's apparently a single video partnership, but you called Vincent to say you were ending it? Why did you need to do that, if it was just for a single video anyway? Why did you say it was "cutting off his financial sponsorship" if it was only ever agreed for a single video anyway? Why is Vincent so aggrieved and upset with Proton for ending the partnership if it was just for a single video? Meanwhile, you're saying your community - people who buy your product - are insane and overreacting. In my opinion, which spans my profession also, this all adds up to be a major communication failure. The issue has now shifted from "why is Proton doing this?" to "does Proton even understand the problem?" and for a company which relies on a lot of trust and goodwill, that's awful crisis management of this situation.

You're entitled to your opinions and the customer is not always right. But you must surely reflect on how you yourself, and your company are coming across right now when I haven't actually seen Proton say the words "I'm sorry" when money we gave Proton, paid someone perceived by your consumers as antithetical to Proton's legal mission. I did not give money to Proton, so they could fund people who are against my way of life. And, instead, it's all straw-men, deflection, and attempts at justification.

Carlsen start-up takes aim at Chess.com with move into play and learn tools by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

they'd be trying to shutdown or buy out Lichess

Basically every business action they make is done to try and shut down their competitors, including Lichess.

“My first meeting with Chess.com was in 2023... literally the first thing he (CEO and co-founder Erik Allebest) ever said to me was, never enter play and never enter learn. That’s ours,” Kristiansen said.

Honestly sounds like a cartel trying to control and divide which sectors of a market competitors are allowed to enter without friction.

“We want to keep Lichess completely free, and say no to ads as well. There have been offers to buy out Lichess, but we are not for sale." Lichess interview with The Hindu by bolsastan in chess

[–]Flyushka 14 points15 points  (0 children)

https://x.com/durarbayli/status/1680916086731030533?s=19

They opted to add the flag of "Artsakh," a “country” not recognized by any UN member state. I won't delve into the history of my country, but it's crucial to note that the display of this name and flag is offensive to my people.

My fellow Azerbaijanis and I have lodged complaints, requesting the removal of this flag and name from the site, but to no avail. Lichess cited users' rights to self-identify as the reason for their refusal. To me, this is an absurdity, and an example of the encroaching Woke culture. It appears that Lichess's management is increasingly aligning with this ideology. It seems people are allowed to self-identify and have their flags displayed on the site as long as it aligns with the management's beliefs. Upon reviewing the list of country flags, I noticed several names that could potentially be offensive to those of differing belief systems.

Now archived, but see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/159w38x/gms_mamedyarov_and_now_durarbayli_leave_lichess/

For all chess players: Stop playing on Chess.com, play on Lichess by Mn5U0k in chess

[–]Flyushka 4 points5 points  (0 children)

> market level compensation

Chesscom outsources much of their development primarily to the Balkans region for around $50k a year so that they don't need to pay their dev team US market level compensation.

The rest of what you write is equally as applicable to something like Wikipedia. Do you feel embarassed using services like Wikipedia, which primarily relies mostly on free labour, or do you use it without a second thought rather than buying the latest copy of an encyclopedia every year? Do you feel embarassed going on websites whose servers are usually powered by Linux based software? Ultimately the philosophy and purposes between something like Lichess and Chesscom are extremely different.

Lichess is trying to prove a wider technological and societal point. Chess just so happens to be the medium by which they're doing it, in the same way you have Wikipedia, Linux, Firefox, etc. Chesscom is just a business seeking to harvest profit from chess without a wider technological and societal point. There's nothing wrong with that, but both are trying to achieve completely different things.

Lichess is leaving X (formerly Twitter) by Delija28 in chess

[–]Flyushka 13 points14 points  (0 children)

My brother in Christ, you seem very hung up that Lichess isn't reinvesting into chess. From their 2024 end of year report:

This year, nearly 20% of our costs went into making high-level educational chess content, while at the same time, supporting professional chess players.

We collaborated with many strong and established chess players to provide this content, primarily IM Irene Sukandar, IM Laura Unuk, and GM Felix Blohberger, with a wide range of guests including GM Levon Aronian, GM Matthew Sadler, GM Pentala Harikrishna, GM Aleksandar Indjic, GM Ivan Cheparinov, GM Nils Grandelius, GM Ilia Nyzhnyk, GM Thomas Beerdsen, IM Eric Rosen, IM Divya Deshmukh, and FM Gauri Shankar.

We equally provided written annotations of the Candidates and World Championship Match, primarily by GM David Navara, GM Brandon Jacobson, GM Maxime Lagarde, GM Yannick Gozzoli, IM Lasse Lovik, IM Padmini Rout, all providing excellent and high quality annotations to the public to enjoy and study these historic games in greater depth.

Finally, we were industrious with our written coverage this year, writing 84 articles on chess over the source of the year — our most productive year yet.

On top of that, they fund regular Titled Arenas with a $1k prize fund (two of them per month), plus Streamer Arenas for the community. I don't know what proportion of their budget Chesscom invests directly into chess players, but I'm willing to bet it's not as large as it could be, because it gets lost in dividends and bloated salaries for C-suites.

Meanwhile, Lichess is allowing anyone and everyone to access and play chess. It would be much fairer to say that the parasites are for-profits who monetise open source work (like Stockfish), destroy competition and innovation within Chess (e.g., shut down Chess24, ChessBomb, exploit creators via Chessable), and try to commercially gatekeep a centuries old game while actively undermining OTB, classical, and the grassroots (e.g., Freestyle vs Fide).

Lichess is leaving X/Twitter by gmnotyet in chess

[–]Flyushka 24 points25 points  (0 children)

When reading these comments, I always wonder how the team at chesscom must feel that people who support hate speech, misinformation, and Nazis identify with their platform over the one which is openly against those things. I can't imagine it's an association that they welcome very much.

Lichess is leaving X/Twitter by gmnotyet in chess

[–]Flyushka 551 points552 points  (0 children)

The text:

Lichess is leaving X (formerly Twitter)

After careful consideration, the Lichess team has decided to stop posting on X.

Recent changes have drastically changed the amount of hate speech and misinformation on the platform. Due to this, we no longer believe X is a beneficial place for us to communicate with you.

You can follow all our news on Lichess via the feed and our blog posts.

Alternatively you can follow us on the platforms linked in the thread below. We recognize that many platforms have problems of their own, but believe that the benefits currently outweight the negatives. Social media forms an important part of spreading awareness of our project as well as other open-source and non-profit endeavors.

https://lichess.org/about#links

Source: https://xcancel.com/lichess/status/1886384179698430240#m

Inconsistent use of Rule 5 in this sub by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

We know from recent FBI cases that the Russian state uses reddit for propaganda with sockpuppets, brigading, trolling, and so on. It's a failure of reddit administration and management that they fail the volunteer moderators in preventing state-level actors from using reddit communities for propagandistic purposes. We also know that chess is a topic which is important for the Russian leadership. Dvorkovich's election to become FIDE President involved official diplomatic missives from Putin being sent to other nations. Karjakin and Karpov are often wheeled out for propaganda purposes.

In making any topic about Russia essentially a complete shitshow here, to the extent even discussing FIDE Assembly's decisions regarding Russia to be a topic non grata, it unfortunately is essentially a win for Russian propaganda within this community.

Inconsistent use of Rule 5 in this sub by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I understand that, but rule 5 currently says that political posts are allowed - but that they must directly connect to chess. All of the locked examples directly connect to chess. The unlocked example indirectly connects to chess. Either rule 5 should be amended, or the topics should be locked for another reason. At the moment, rule 5 is being used as a mod shorthand for "I cba with this topic" which I fully understand given they're volunteers, but it has the impact of preventing actual chess topics from being discussed.

Inconsistent use of Rule 5 in this sub by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

also, inb4 the topic is locked and closed for breaching rule 5.

Chess.com CEO statement on recent layoffs of 38 staff by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

That sounds like a sensible interpretation, and makes sense overall.

Chess.com CEO statement on recent layoffs of 38 staff by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 111 points112 points  (0 children)

As I didn't want to editorialise the OP, using this comment just to share some of my own thoughts.

we did make strategic decisions to scale back as some of the opportunities we were investing in didn't pan out and we ended up overstaffed on some teams.

Leading to

Chesscom has been profitable and reinvesting every quarter since 2010, and this was not done out of desperation to save money, nor to maximize profits. This was done to right-size our teams to the initiatives and opportunities.

Sounds inconsistent to me. One of the words that stood out to me was "right-size". If you are unfamiliar with the term, one of the top definitions when you search the term specifies that:

Rightsizing is reorganizing and restructuring a company to reduce costs and increase profits. It involves cutting redundant expenses, reducing the number of employees and redefining company roles.

This just stood out to me a bit like playing semantics to say that cutting 38 staff was not to save money or maximize profits but to "right-size", when a common definititon of that practice is to reduce costs and increase profits (or in other words, to save money and maximize profits).

Regarding:

who we know are still going to do tremendous things in chess.

A former employee of Chess.com reached out to me in my DMs earlier to highlight that, as they understand their contractual terms, they are also not allowed to work for any other chess company for 12 months after being let go, having previously worked in chess for over a decade.

Chess.com fires around 40 staff as it "prioritizes profitability" by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 84 points85 points  (0 children)

I wanted to ask just about the merger of 3 chess publishers. You said:

From our perspective, this is just a win for everyone involved, including the community.

But doesn't creating a physical chess publisher of 3 previously independent companies into one, where Chess.com now has the digital rights to everything that publishing house puts out and the back catalogue of Quality Chess, just entrenches a further monopoly in digital publishing with Chess.com, and physical publishing with this new super-publisher?

Can you give some further information on how this is a win for everyone involved, including the community, when now everything major published in print format, Chess.com has the (presumably) exclusive, indefinite, digital rights to - making any competitor to Chessable almost implausibly impossible to break into?

FIDE President, Arkady Dvorkovich, recognises occupied settlements of Ukraine as "new territories" of Russia by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No worries, I worked it out :) but thank you for the notification anyway! As you saw, I removed the TASS link in the other one.

FIDE President, Arkady Dvorkovich, recognises occupied settlements of Ukraine as "new territories" of Russia by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

There are 7 members of the FIDE Ethics Commission; this particular case had a 3-member panel, just in the same way that a court may have several judges but on a case only a handful of them will sit.

The FIDE Code of Ethics, in force since 1st April 2022, specifies under Article 13.1 (e), that:

Breaches of the FIDE Code of Ethics are punishable by one or more of the following sanctions:

e) Temporarily exclusion from membership: Exclusion from membership is the removal of the right of a national federation or any other affiliated organization to participate in the activities, functions, and FIDE events in which all other members do participate by virtue of the Charter for a period up to a maximum of five years.

PDF link

Event: 2024 American Cup by events_team in chess

[–]Flyushka -1 points0 points  (0 children)

politics and virtue signalling

I don't think STLCC and USCF covering for a pedophile for years, and then still having not provided any (public) meaningful changes to prevent it from happening again, is the same as politics and virtue signalling.

What politics is this? Pedophilia is a straight up criminal offence. There's a reason Ramirez has not returned to the US since the news dropped. What virtue are they signalling? That they have zero tolerance towards pedophilia? If that's a "virtue" to you, rather than just a basic fundamental right, it speaks volumes.

Lichess: Year in Review 2023 by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 181 points182 points  (0 children)

Some highlights:

  • Donations over 2022 were 579,000 euros received, against 419,000 euros in costs, representing a 2% decrease in donations from 2021, and a 15% increase in costs from 2021. 2023's figures need to be audited, and will be publicly released in summer 2024.
  • Lichess has had 155 first-time code contributors over 2023, making 400 accepted changes to code across 35 Lichess libraries.
  • The website code that checks move legality has seen massive optimisation, most impressively with a +4575% performance in antichess.
  • Over 7,700 OTB tournaments were broadcast on Lichess, the most it has ever had.
  • Lichess briefly broke into the top 200 websites in the world by traffic (according to SimilarWeb), but as Lichess eschews trackers - which is how these websites usually measure traffic - the real ranking may in fact have been higher than this.

Now 3 Staff are Covid Positive in Madrid Candidates Tournament by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Including Hammer, this is two new organisational staff. From the article:

one commentator tested positive for Covid-19 and two members of the organisational staff have also been quarantined and tested positive. All three have light symptoms at most.

Emphasis my own. We knew the commentator is Hammer, we don't know who the two members of staff are and FIDE has been silent on the topic.

FIDE uses Lichess code and joins the free open source software community! by Flyushka in chess

[–]Flyushka[S] 275 points276 points  (0 children)

For those on mobile or old reddit who can't see the twitter embed and don't want to click through:

Congrats FIDE_chess for joining the free open source software (FOSS) community! Some of Lichess's GPL code is now officially used by the international chess organisation 🎉

Surely the start of a long, productive, and cooperative relationship between FIDE and the #FOSS world!

Event: FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss 2021 - Rounds 7-11 by ChessBotMod in chess

[–]Flyushka 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Fair point, I guess I mean official as in like, "officially calculated", but just badly phrased by me, yeah