[HN Gopher] Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers
___________________________________________________________________
Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers
Author : promiseofbeans
Score : 302 points
Date : 2023-09-19 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lichess.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lichess.org)
| ssss11 wrote:
| I like this.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Lichess and it's author are so cool that I subscribed to monthly
| donation even though it gives me literally nothing.
| canistel wrote:
| Trivia: Lidraughts was created taking inspiration from Lichess,
| and this is acknowledged in https://lidraughts.org/about. In the
| spirit of Lichess, they too keep the source open and avoid
| serving ads. Draughts, unfortunately, does not enjoy the same
| status or fanfare as chess and seems to have more following in
| poorer countries (except for Netherlands and Russia). I feel that
| it needs all the help it can get, and Lidraughts is a big relief.
| bad_user wrote:
| Did you know Lichess is built in Scala 3 ;-)
| [deleted]
| jurassicfoxy wrote:
| Lichess is truly amazing.
|
| I am a monthly Lichess donator, and you too can donate via
| https://lichess.org/patron
| kevincox wrote:
| [flagged]
| oh_sigh wrote:
| A more apt analogy would be someone giving away snacks in a
| park, and they have an advertisement printed on the snack
| wrapper. However, when you take the snack, you hold it upside
| down in your hand so the advertisement is obscured. Are you
| doing something wrong by holding the snack in that manner?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Anybody who publishes any kind of media can insert
| advertisements that are unblockable. For example if your
| content is in text-form, you have to make the ad a part of the
| body text, just like I do while I sip from a refreshing and
| healthy Dr Pepper. Of course you can not track, spy, or install
| malware on your visitors machines with such in-content ads, but
| there are other ways to check if the ads work.
|
| Readers of this comment can get a 20% discount on their next Dr
| Pepper order using promotional code "Hacker1338". Limited time
| offer.
| elashri wrote:
| I think your analogy is not suitable. Doing physical exercise
| does not have risks of infecting your body with viruses
| (malware). And will not invade your privacy for sure.
|
| I am amazed at the fact the ublock origin is the best security
| defence we have. I install it on my relatives machine and most
| of their problems dissappears.
| kibwen wrote:
| You've got the analogy right in that the internet is like a
| public park. Where your analogy goes wrong is in the fact that
| these service providers have set up a bakery in the park, and
| are trying to charge anyone who merely smells the bread, and
| then accuse people of stealing when they refuse to pay for the
| act of inhaling while walking through the public park.
|
| The internet is a _public resource_. Your website is a _guest_
| on my computer. I will do with your website what I will. The
| one and only choice you have is to not serve it to me. Once you
| have served it to me, you don 't get to dictate how I use it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Sites don't require advertisements around links to their
| sites. Once you follow a link (scent) to the destination that
| is when advertisements are shown in exchange for allowing you
| to access something of value.
|
| >Once you have served it to me, you don't get to dictate how
| I use it.
|
| If you do not have a license to modify the site that is
| copyright infringement.
| rollcat wrote:
| > If you do not have a license to modify the site that is
| copyright infringement.
|
| It is fair use.
|
| If I buy a physical copy of a poster, and draw on it before
| I hang it on my wall, it's fair use.
|
| If I buy a CD and it includes an instrumental version of a
| track and I badly sing to it, it's fair use.
|
| If I buy a designer brand table and decide it's too tall, I
| can saw off 5cm from its legs, and it's fair use.
|
| If I download a freely distributed document from the
| Internet, to display on my computer's screen, and decide
| not to look at a part of it - it _is_ fair use.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >If I buy a physical copy of a poster, and draw on it
| before I hang it on my wall, it's fair use.
|
| It's not necessarily fair use.
|
| >If I buy a CD and it includes an instrumental version of
| a track and I badly sing to it, it's fair use.
|
| Unless the venue you are at has paid for the performance
| rights of that song that is copyright infringement.
|
| >If I buy a designer brand table and decide it's too
| tall, I can saw off 5cm from its legs, and it's fair use.
|
| It's not necessarily fair use.
|
| >If I download a freely distributed document from the
| Internet, to display on my computer's screen, and decide
| not to look at a part of it - it is fair use.
|
| Considering removing ads hurts monetarily I definitely
| don't think it could be fair use.
| meristohm wrote:
| For personal consumption?
|
| I modify the ebooks I read, changing the font and other
| formatting, reducing the size of images or removing them
| entirely, and removing advert pages (sometimes, not
| compulsively). I do this for my own readability preferences
| (I don't have a formalized disability, just preferences at
| this point). As I am not reselling the artist's work, I
| consider this fair use. To what degree am I wrong?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Personal consumption doesn't make copyright infringement
| okay. It just makes it harder to be caught.
| hightrix wrote:
| Quoting as this is the best phrasing I've heard, thank you.
|
| > The internet is a public resource. Your website is a guest
| on my computer. I will do with your website what I will. The
| one and only choice you have is to not serve it to me. Once
| you have served it to me, you don't get to dictate how I use
| it.
|
| And completely agreed. Put simply, if you don't want to give
| something away for free, don't give it away for free.
| benatkin wrote:
| It isn't theft, that's a gross exaggeration. Alas it's a
| popular one. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/ad-blocking-is-
| stealing,news-20...
|
| > These days, most Web publishers rely on advertising to pay
| the bills. Some charge subscription fees, but for the most
| part, readers have shown that they aren't willing to pay for
| access to Web content. Even if they earn revenue from
| subscriptions or e-commerce links, few sites can turn a profit
| without running a substantial number of ads.
|
| Boo friggin' hoo. If you don't like it, shutter your site.
| Since 2015 when this article was written, ads have gotten
| worse, and the blame can't be placed entirely on people using
| ad blockers. FWIW I don't use one, I use the ad blocker in my
| brain (the article says "However, trying to actively filter ads
| from websites is stealing" and that's what I do when I ignore
| ads). I guess by their logic I should stop doing that and read
| every ad or else I'm tantamount to a burglar.
| anononaut wrote:
| You use the ad blocker in your brain?? Have you forgotten
| what computers are here to do in the first place?
| digging wrote:
| > I use the ad blocker in my brain
|
| Blocking ads is about more than just not perceiving them
| (although that's a tremendous benefit). Ads are actually
| hostile: they often ruin the UI/UX, make the site harder to
| use, can install malware of all kinds, and/or directly
| harvest data from you for profit (which could also be called
| stealing, to use the language of the industry).
|
| Ad-blocking software is simply form of self defense.
| Devasta wrote:
| So to confirm, whenever ads come on on the TV, you sit and
| diligently watch them? Wouldn't want to steal the tv show after
| all.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I already had massive respect for Lichess but this is just
| incredible. I wish them all the success in the world.
| bilekas wrote:
| > It's important to note that blocking ads is NOT theft. Don't
| fall for this creepy idea, which is the criminalisation of the
| inalienable right to privacy.
|
| This is something I've never actually focused on but it's wild
| the amount of people I've installed AdBlock and ublock for who
| think it's something nefarious.
| Airsinner wrote:
| Ads and targeted ads aren't the same thing, so idk if I agree
| that ad blocking is per se a privacy right.
|
| Practically, of course, it's a different story.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Untargeted ads are still a security nightmare. Why would I
| permit loading and executing scripts / resources from
| arbitrary domains? Ublock is layer 0 defense against malware
| and viruses.
| Airsinner wrote:
| Why would an ad _need_ to run a script, use meaningful
| resources or even be from arbitrary domains?
|
| Those are all practical arguments, but the point I'm making
| is that advertising doesn't have to be this way; it's the
| implementation that's the problem, not the theory.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...it's wild the amount of people I've installed AdBlock and
| ublock for who think it's something nefarious
|
| Because it is? Ad blocking is arguably at least unethical.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Not more unethical than making money off of manipulating
| people, spreading malware and viruses, etc.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Nope. My attention belongs to me and me alone. It's not
| currency to pay for services with. Ad blockers are not only
| ethical, they're justified self defense.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This stance is absurd. It's your device, you choose what
| content you want to consume on it. Do you imagine a world
| where you buy a monitor and once every hour it shows you
| fullscreen ads from the device manufacturer without your
| consent? Maybe you do, but for everyone else that's a
| dystopia.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I think you are overreacting
|
| > This stance is absurd.
|
| It's not 'absurd', because he _did_ say "arguably",
| meaning that there's an argument to be made for either side
| of the issue (and a poster below makes an argument).
|
| Pointing out that ad-blocking is arguably unethical is
| fine. If he had said "it's unarguably unethical", then
| sure, _that 's_ absurd, but the poster qualified his
| statement quite nicely.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Visiting sites consume resources. If you walk into a store
| and take a gift card you're still consuming resources meant
| to be paid for, even if they're mostly digital resources.
| Regardless of the car or shoes you used to do it.
|
| I don't welcome a world of paid products that also include
| ads. Yet ads do make some paid products cheaper, like say a
| Kindle or a TV. Folks blocking ads from a premium product
| probably have a stronger defense. Those blocking ads from
| an entirely ad supported service less so.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is misguided. Just like visiting a site consumes
| resources on their server, visiting a site consumes
| resources on my system, in fact, if I don't block ads it
| consumes even more resources. In many cases I would argue
| that fetching and rendering the whole flashing shebang of
| ad garbage some sites ship these days consumes
| considerably more resources than simply serving the files
| on a server.
| wmal wrote:
| > Yet ads do make some paid products cheaper
|
| 1. Companies selling paid products see ads as an
| additional revenue and not a way of filling a hole in the
| budget caused by price reductions. The price wasn't
| reduced. That's a fairy tale.
|
| 2. Even if (1) wasn't true, the consumer seeing ads ends
| up spending more. They pay for the goods and services
| being advertised. If they didn't spend more the whole ad
| business model wouldn't work.
| blackmesaind wrote:
| A false equivalency. Websites want to entice you to
| visit, stores do not want to entice you to steal gift
| cards.
|
| As for whether you can make blocking ads an ethical
| imperative, I'd agree that without ads, there likely
| wouldn't be an incentive to provide helpful, free
| services. If anything, it's theft of the value that other
| ad-consenting visitors are providing.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Stores want to sell you gift cards paid for by your
| money. Websites want to 'sell' you website content paid
| for by showing you ads. Some sites even sell you the
| content ad free by paying them directly.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Just because a company has found a way to make money off
| of ads doesn't mean we're morally obligated to look at
| those ads, nor even incidentally be exposed to them.
| Consider an example applied outside of the internet.
|
| Let's say I open a restaurant that advertises itself as
| "FREE PIZZA", and I give them a free pizza if asked _but_
| I also hand them a 2cm thick stack of ad flyers. Is it
| morally wrong to take that stack of advertising and just
| throw it away without looking at it while still eating
| the pizza? I (and I think most people) would say that
| throwing away the ads is totally acceptable; they 're the
| fools giving away the free pizza with the _hope_ that
| they 'll drive business for the advertisers. If the free-
| pizza shop goes out of business because everyone throws
| away the ad flyers, that's something we consider totally
| ok because that's probably not a great business approach.
|
| The only reason we consider ads online different is
| because it's become so normalized. We the users have come
| to expect many services for free, and the folks making
| their money by including the ads _have become vocally
| entitled to users eyeballs and the money it makes them._
| They say "my business will fail if you block my ads; you
| owe me your eyeballs." Yeah, that's not my problem; I'm
| an audience member who owes the content-provider/service
| nothing and who's agreed to nothing (TOS's and EULA's
| have tried to move the goalposts on this after decades,
| don't be fooled), the only party the content-
| provider/service is _actually_ doing business with is
| their advertising network, so they should figure it
| amongst themselves.
| slumberlust wrote:
| This is an interesting, yet bewildering take. Do you work
| for Unity by chance?
|
| Most stores will gladly have you enter their store at a
| cost, the hardest and most expensive part of the process
| is getting you there.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I work for a company that helps sell ad free and bonus
| podcast content. Yet I've had these opinions far longer.
| digging wrote:
| > Visiting sites consume resources.
|
| Less if you block their ads and JS.
| dylan604 wrote:
| but are ads actually served using resources of the site?
| i just assumed that the ad was served from the ad
| provider. the only resources used of the site was the
| initial JS code. redirecting through the host seems very
| inefficient.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Ads are displayed on _my_ machines. Using the processor
| cycles and RAM of _my_ computers. Powered by _my_
| electricity. Consuming _my_ limited attention span.
| Injecting information I didn 't ask for and do not want
| to remember into _my_ mind.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| So avoid sites with ads?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Visiting sites consume resources.
|
| Not our problem. They're the ones sending free web pages
| to any client who requests. Their servers are free to
| return 402 Payment Required if they require payment.
| rndmwlk wrote:
| I think a more fitting analogy would be walking into a
| store to sit down and cool off with no intent of buying
| anything. You are "taking" passive resources (air
| conditioning, space, potentially employee attention).
| Would you consider that to be unethical?
|
| Personally, I don't believe ad blocking is unethical
| because I don't believe the ways in which advertisers
| collect and sell their data is ethical.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Our data* It's not their
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If you could loiter in a store and automatically bypass
| seeing anything being sold there then that would be
| unethical. Some places even have rules against loitering
| because they just don't have capacity to serve as a hang
| out spot for all the people living nearby.
| dan353hehe wrote:
| Is it also unethical to not read the ads in a newspaper? Or
| to not watch the commercials on TV?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If it was automated and you still consumed the other
| resources (paid largely or entirely by ad impressions) then
| that case could be made.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I actively avoid ads in print and other media where it's
| not possible to just block them, and skip through paid
| for posts in Telegram channels without reading a single
| word from them. Once you get used to doing this, it
| becomes second nature -- pretty much _automatic_
| behavior.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Why does it matter whether it's automatic?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Because if you have to manually notice, recognize, then
| look away, then arguably you've already paid with your
| attention. If someone or something is doing it for you
| (and others) automatically then it eliminates the
| 'payment' and undermines producers ability to produce.
| janalsncm wrote:
| For the record, a lot of ads in newspapers are in
| separate inserts which easily be separated and tossed
| out. Grocery store bundles for example.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| True but that still requires the would-be reader to take
| action, and likely read something printed on them
| bee_rider wrote:
| One way to figure out if a case could be made, or if
| something is "arguably" true, is to try and make a case
| or argument and see if it works. Just speculating that it
| might be possible to make a case is kind of weasel-wordy.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| Actually NOT blocking ads is at the very least morally evil
| and degenerate.
|
| You are a very bad person if you think adverts are morally
| justifiable in any form.
| Narishma wrote:
| If anything it's ads that are unethical.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > Because it is? Ad blocking is arguably at least unethical.
|
| If all an ad was was a static image, I might agree.
|
| As it stands though, with RTB being what it is, ad blocking
| is the only means to protect yourself from a massive
| unethical, unconsensual breach of privacy.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Or boycott the sites. Or perhaps just boycott the risky
| capability like JavaScript.
| indigochill wrote:
| Nah.
|
| Now, I get that you're probably coming at this from "But
| hosting costs money and advertising is a way to recuperate
| the cost, so visiting the site but blocking ads is leeching
| bandwidth from the host without providing value back in the
| form of ad revenue".
|
| But this doesn't hold up. All the cards are held by the
| content provider. If they -actually- have a problem with
| this, they have ways to stop it.
|
| 1. A server will always serve a request. That's it's job. So
| there's some unavoidable up-front cost to being a server on
| the internet.
|
| 2. But once it gets the request, it might serve a response
| that executes client-side Javascript that detects that an ad-
| blocker is running. At this point the content provider has a
| decision. They could block the requester. For example,
| redirect to a "Disable your adblocker" page. Or even in
| extreme cases blacklist the IP the request came from (though
| practically this doesn't happen). Heck, if things devolved
| into an arms race around ad-blocking detection, you could
| probably detect this server-side with some mechanism around
| serving a request to a browser while at the same time issuing
| a request to an ad provider to see if they received a
| corresponding ad content request within a certain window and
| if not, you know the ad was effectively blocked.
|
| Ultimately it's not an obligation to accept ads. It's the
| content provider's prerogative to decide to deny service to
| ad-blocking clients, but realistically most content providers
| want traffic even if it's not generating ad revenue because
| of those sweet engagement metrics. If they don't, they have
| the tools to stop serving those requests.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| One can enter physically a theater and watch a movie
| without paying quote often. Depending on the timing and
| staff you may not be confronted for a long time or at all.
|
| Does that mean theaters don't really care or obligate
| consumers to pay?
| jdbernard wrote:
| There is nuance because the behavior around physical
| spaces is well established by law and social norm. This
| is absolutely not true for the internet, as evidenced by
| this very debate.
|
| If you will indulge the hypothetical, and we step back
| from the established social norms (people know you are
| expected to pay), who is responsible for making sure
| customers understand the need to pay? The theater. If the
| theater doesn't secure their doors and doesn't say
| anywhere "you must pay to enter," then it's a completely
| reasonable behavior for someone to enter and watch until
| they are asked to leave or pay. If they refuse to leave,
| they're trespassing. If they are told to pay before
| entering and they sneak in, this is clearly trespassing.
|
| But this is not really the same thing as online
| advertising. Online advertising is more like, you ask
| them to deliver a DVD to your house, and the agreement is
| "we'll deliver the DVD if you also let us place a camera
| and microphone in your home to watch your reaction to the
| DVD." Then you allow the DVD in but refuse entry to the
| spy gear. It would be very problematic to try and force
| people to accept the spy gear, or prevent them from
| denying entry to the spy gear. It would lead to laws
| purposefully designed to deny people privacy and control
| over their own homes. A much better solution would be for
| the company to just not allow you to take the DVD unless
| you also take the spy gear and to create laws around that
| behavior if necessary.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Do you sometimes have trouble identifying traffic lights in
| photographs? Or perceiving character gestalts from distorted
| images?
|
| After you confirm your humanity to the best extent you can,
| proceed to reexamine your ethics.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Accusing people with different opinions of being less than
| human (or out of touch with humanity) only harms and does
| not help your argument.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Easy now. It's not like I did anything mean like accuse
| you of being in ad sales.
|
| Also, kettle, you're the one telling people they're
| behaving unethically.
| mattchew wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. The free content is possible
| because of the advertisements, and you are sort of consenting
| to the ads when you choose to visit the site. It's not an
| explicit agreement but it is at least an understanding of
| what lets the wheels keep turning.
|
| However, when ads are so obtrusive that they slow down my
| computer or ruin the use of the site completely, or if they
| have malware payloads (does happen) then I'm quite happy to
| use an ad blocker. I didn't use one until I started
| encountering this kind of nonsense regularly.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If we collectively boycotted the sites that allow such
| garbage then they would serve less obtrusive ads.
|
| To consume the content without even considering ads makes
| it unethical.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Nothing at all unethical about it. We're not obligated to
| spend even one second looking at ads. They sent us free
| stuff _hoping_ we were going to notice the ads they
| bundled alongside it. We 're not obligated to do that
| though. It's that simple.
| UberFly wrote:
| Why do so many fail to also mention Pi-Hole? :(
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Maybe it's a bit too much for non-tech savy users
| miki123211 wrote:
| > These don't benefit us, the website users, in any way
|
| Except for, you know, allowing those websites to exist in the
| first place? Ads and data are nothing but a form of payment, the
| gold or salt of the internet age.
|
| The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and
| subscriptions. If ads didn't exist or weren't as accurate as they
| can be with invasive tracking, we'd have far less content out
| there, and most of the existing content would be locked behind
| paywalls, making search engines even more useless than they
| already are. There would be no free video hosting on Youtube, no
| free music on Spotify, no free educational resources for those
| who can't afford books, and calling your friends on another
| continent would still be a few dollars per minute. The internet
| would be a much sadder place even if you were rich, and almost
| completely inaccessible to you if you were poor (or a teenager
| without a bank account / a resident of a sanctioned country / an
| undocumented and unbanked immigrant.)
|
| Ad Blocking is a "tragedy of the commons" problem, your internet
| experience is better if you do it than if you don't, but if 100%
| of users were to start successfully blocking ads everywhere, the
| experience for those same users would quickly degrade.
| wholesomepotato wrote:
| > The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and
| subscriptions.
|
| Great. An alternative is an honest way to conduct business.
| We'll take it.
|
| We could get rid of all that click-bait AI-generate crap and
| not waste everyone's time, among tons of other benefits.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| This is clearly not true; Wikipedia isn't ad supported and is
| incredibly successful and prolific. You can use educational
| tools like WolframAlpha freely and pay (using a normal
| subscription model) for its more advanced features, no
| advertising required. KhanAcademy is completely free (yes I
| know they host many of their videos on YouTube; that's a
| minority of the content on KA these days and I suspect would be
| a relatively minor hosting cost at this point based on how tiny
| and easy to compress their video presentation style is).
|
| The internet would be different, yes. We'd probably see much
| less of a gold-rush than we've historically seen. I think it
| would still be just as much of a treasure in learning and
| communication as it is today though.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Wikipedia has a somewhat unique architecture in that it's
| mostly text and most of that text can be cached. This is also
| true about blogs and sites like HN and Stackoverflow, but not
| social media sites, search engines, messaging services, video
| and image hosting sites etc.
|
| Most Wikipedia visitors use an ad-supported search engine to
| find articles. All that Wikipedia itself needs to do is to
| find the URL in their cache and send the pre-rendered HTML
| page. For many requests, there are no SQL queries to execute
| and there's no PHP Wikimedia code to run, it's just finding
| some HTML in a glorified key-value store. There's relatively
| little code to run and relatively little bandwidth required,
| so the cost-per-user isn't that high. There's also very
| little technical innovation, the core problem has been solved
| and the community is just adding more content. Same goes for
| HN and Stackoverflow.
|
| Not all websites can operate that way. Search engines need
| lots of compute for indexing and search, and lots of
| developers to fight SEO spam. Not all searches can even be
| cached, "nearby Sushi restaurants" needs to return results
| based on your location etc. Social media websites spend a lot
| of money on moderation, and all their users are logged in,
| giving them far fewer opportunities for caching. Pushing a
| Taylor Swift tweet to all her followers in almost real time
| is definitely no small feat. Messaging apps need to deal with
| a lot of push notifications and a much higher proportion of
| writes to reads (when compared to Wikipedia), also
| moderation, fighting bots etc. Video and image hosting
| websites need much more bandwidth and storage (and possibly
| compute for transcoding), and those aren't free.
|
| The non-profit, no ads, free-for-all model just doesn't work
| that well for this kind of platforms.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| In an alternate world where ad funded sites never took
| off...
|
| Taylor Swift could publish an RSS feed, or pay Twitter
| since it's basically a marketing channel for her. Messaging
| apps could have been p2p (and maybe ISPs would've had a
| reason to get ipv6 working since otherwise you'd hear "IM
| doesn't work on Cox" etc. Or maybe ISPs could provide
| federated chat gateways like they did with email). ISPs
| might bundle hosting (they used to), or Microsoft would
| have had a reason to have built Personal Web Server into
| something everyone uses today. Maybe people would share
| viral videos they liked on something like gnutella using
| magnet links from forums.
|
| It might not work for companies trying to corral the entire
| world onto their platform, but maybe that model isn't very
| good.
| Timshel wrote:
| >The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and
| subscriptions.
|
| You do realize Lichess is free has no adds / paywalls or
| subscription ?
| ziyao_w wrote:
| Thibault (the creator of lichess) is a really impressive human
| being. I don't idolize people but he is quite inspiring.
|
| There's an old perpetual chess podcast episode where he said he
| has never seen a single ad that was useful :-) Which is somewhat
| extreme and probably hyperbole but still his philosophy is loud
| and clear.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Not once did I win an iPod for punching the monkey.
| Eduard wrote:
| > Which is somewhat extreme and probably hyperbole but still
| his philosophy is loud and clear.
|
| Is it? I wish online ads that make it through would target me
| well.
|
| yes, I use adblockers and I opt out of data collection. But any
| old-school advertisement such as print, TV, billboard, and
| prospect ads feel more targeted / relevant to me and guide me
| to a sales funnel than online ads.
| c-fe wrote:
| On this subject, I did see an ad for a small music festival
| near my hometown, and i brought the ticket and had a good time.
| If i had not seen the add, I would not have known about the
| festival, so I actually did at least once see a useful ad
| the_other wrote:
| I used to hate ads, for the intrusion they made. Then I
| started to run my own ventures and realised advertising is
| essential: even finding friends and partners requires
| advertising of a sort.
|
| But on the web, advertising doesn't stop at attention theft.
| Most web ads are agents of surveillance networks, and also
| are software running on your hardware. Neither we should
| tolerate.
| indigochill wrote:
| Yeah, I actually went to school for "strategic
| communication" which was in large part
| advertising/marketing/PR. I originally had this very naive
| perspective that these sorts of communication are important
| and valuable. Which is still true (we all engage in -some-
| form of self-promotion, even if only in how we choose to
| present ourselves to others), but with massive asterisks.
|
| In my ideal, advertising and marketing are about really
| understanding what the other party needs and finding a
| truly mutually beneficial agreement that actually generates
| value through exchange (A has X but values Y more highly, B
| has Y but values X more highly, simply by the act of
| exchange, value is generated).
|
| I was even pro-tracking at one point because the more you
| know about people, the better you can understand their
| needs so the better you can offer them something they'll
| value. In the abstract, I still think there's something
| here. But it has to be done responsibly and with a user-
| before-profit mindset.
|
| By contrast, ad companies have time and again proven
| themselves irresponsible with this information, e.g.
| selling it to shady groups.
| bee_rider wrote:
| How'd you get the ad? It seems like something that could be
| posted on a coffee shop bulletin board for example, or placed
| in the culture section of a local newspaper. In other words,
| environment and location are all that are really needed, we
| wouldn't need to send somebody to stalk you (like Facebook or
| Google) in order to show you this ad.
|
| Ads are only good for things with broad appeal like that.
| blastro wrote:
| ornicar if you're reading this, just know we all love you.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Tracking sells our personal information to increase
| advertisement effectiveness_
|
| Saying this downplays the invasiveness and threat. That's not the
| only purpose.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| The manifesto at the end is a thing of beauty. Cuts through the
| crap and really gets to the point.
| cwales95 wrote:
| I love their stance on adblockers and privacy. It's exactly how I
| feel and I refuse to have them in my home or on my devices. I
| also love how they go the extra mile to show people how to
| implement common adblocking techniques.
| hazrmard wrote:
| Does anyone know the difference between personalDNSfilter
| (recommended by lichess) and Blokada for DNS-based blocking? I
| use the latter on my phone.
| ormax3 wrote:
| both work in the same way, by setting up a proxy/local-vpn
| through which all traffic passes in order to filter ad hosts at
| the dns level.
| coldpie wrote:
| Is BlockBear a good solution on iOS? I switched to iOS from
| Android because they were the only ones making a good, small-ish
| phone (on Android, I'd just use Firefox and uBlock Origin), but I
| had no idea what ad blocker to pick. What I have kinda works, but
| I do still see ads sometimes, and the app seems kinda skeevy.
| Would be happy to try something else if it is recommended.
| d1str0 wrote:
| I use 1Blocker and love it.
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Yep 1Blocker is good, simple, and does Safari and DNS
| filtering. Devs are fairly responsive.
|
| Adguard (which lichess lists on their site) has an iOS app
| also that can do Safari and DNS filtering as well.
| jakobdabo wrote:
| You can also use DNSCloak, which can act as a VPN, and proxy
| all DNS requests to a trusted DoH server, like AdGuard.
| quyleanh wrote:
| Use Adguard for Safari and install an adblocking DNS service
| profile. This combo is the best for iOS user.
| hxii wrote:
| BlockBear is so outdated (last update was 5 years ago) that I
| have no idea how it can be recommended.
|
| I personally use AdGuard in combination with Ghostery (but I
| also run PiHole, which I'm connected to all the time).
| 0xDEF wrote:
| +1 for uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock.
|
| Who are the people behind AdGuard and why should I send them all
| my DNS lookups?
|
| I think it's better to use Pi Hole instead.
| TZubiri wrote:
| [flagged]
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Interesting to contrast this with their main competitor at
| Chess.com, which uses AdSense and tracks users with
| googletagmanager.com, sentry.io, kaxsdc.com, facebook-sdk, and
| other third-party data sources.
|
| uBlock is cutting off lichess.org's Fastly CDN resources without
| loss of function, but is otherwise silent. Conversely, uBlock,
| Ghostery, and PrivacyBadger light up my browser like a Christmas
| tree when I visit Chess.com.
|
| Yet another reason to prefer Lichess.
| ar_lan wrote:
| I agree with this, but I think the impressive part about
| Lichess is that it's actually full of competitive users.
|
| Chess.com is, by all measures, the "default" chess application.
| But you still see active GMs and a huge playerbase surrounding
| Lichess, which _enables_ them to actually have their very open
| structure + lack of annoying trackers as features worth peering
| into.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| And many GM's prefer Lichess, like Hikaru in this clip
| casually roasting Chess.com
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvfOR9MFyc
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| What's the issue with sentry?
| janalsncm wrote:
| I'm pretty curious about chess.com's finances. I wonder how
| much they're making from premium accounts vs ads. Can't seem to
| find much online since they're private.
| r053bud wrote:
| We need more Lichess' in the world!
| vsgherzi wrote:
| For the safari folks I've found Wipr to be very good. I just use
| the basic DNS block list and it ends up catching mostly
| everything while being super light and not changing the website
| I'm viewing in any way.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Lichess is so fucking cool. It's easily one of my top
| inspirations for building a company "right."
|
| My favorite part of Lichess is their open financials. Check it
| out:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk...
|
| If you want to know the exact amount to donate to offset your
| gameplay - you can actually _do_ that.
| larodi wrote:
| Being honest is if not the best quality a company can have in
| 21st century.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| I love this part.
|
| In contrast, I barely watch Youtube, so getting premium doesn't
| make sense and I know that everytime I get an ad Google is
| getting less money than what I'd need to bid to skip the ad.
| I'd like to be able to have a money pool to outbid ads that
| would be shown to me and get a decent experience instead.
| freitasm wrote:
| Yet, I run a forum with a subscription option to remove ads.
| About 35% of our traffic blocks ads but we only have a
| hundred or so subscribers out of 150,000 unique visitors a
| month with a 40% return visitor rate.
|
| People use lots of arguments on why to block ads and not
| subscribe at the same time.
| ddalex wrote:
| Why do you permit ad blocking and no subscription ?
| freitasm wrote:
| We tried asking people to whitelist th site a couple of
| times but it is not something (the asking) that people
| like.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| I can't seem to find the income. Is this listed anywhere or is
| just the outgoing "open"?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| These types of businesses only work when they cater to a niche
| audience with a higher than average reasoning ability. Sucks,
| but it's still great when you find ones to be a part of!
| treme wrote:
| props to founders & gov of France that has special funding for
| such institutions.
| marcrosoft wrote:
| Except if you look at their financials they are paying a huge
| tax being a French company. Their resources would go further
| if they left.
| ThePyCoder wrote:
| Not really. Taxes are so high because people get a lot of
| things for cheap/free like Healthcare and education. In
| countries where this isn't the case (USA for example) you'd
| easily pay 2 to 3 times the salary to get the same
| developer.
|
| In this case even only paying the main dev a US wage would
| be more than the taxes on everything.
| counterintuitiv wrote:
| [dead]
| nottorp wrote:
| To be snarky:
|
| How many US people who run non profits end up with a
| "major health event" and have to beg for donations for
| surgery or something?
|
| While the EU people running non profits just... go to the
| doctor when they're sick...
| matsemann wrote:
| If they lived in the US, they probably would have needed to
| draw a double or triple salary? So not sure if they really
| are paying that much more for being in France in the end.
| trollytroll69 wrote:
| go further and do what-hire one more dev?
| stouset wrote:
| > Their resources would go further if they left.
|
| No, because they would have to pay on the open market for
| the things those taxes provide for. The tax they're paying
| is insignificant compared to their costs.
|
| You'll note their developer costs are a _fraction_ of what
| they would be in the US.
| spinningslate wrote:
| which is what enables the French government to fund
| companies like lichess in the first place.
|
| >Their resources would go further if they left.
|
| So, what, say "thanks for the funding that got us started,
| we're off to fill our pockets somewhere else now"?
| Karunamon wrote:
| ... Absolutely yes? Governments are amoral entities, and
| this particular relationship is based entirely on power
| (pay us or else), not mutual respect or any of the other
| things that characterize human social relationships.
|
| If we must anthropomorphize them anyways, then they have
| paid back in taxes many times more than they were given
| to start. Any such "implicit" debt was long since paid,
| so they could move with a clear conscience.
| capableweb wrote:
| You do get back a lot from the taxes you're paying, at
| least in many European countries, where healthcare is
| widely available to all. I don't feel bad paying what an
| American would consider "a lot of taxes" because I know
| it could (but doesn't always) go to helping my neighbor
| who maybe wouldn't be able to pay for a hospital visit if
| not. I also use all the built infrastructure every single
| day, and maintaining it costs money, obviously.
|
| How much money were they given to start? I looked around
| for the numbers but I couldn't find it, but seems you
| were able to, could you share the full number you found?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I don't even dare ask what your opinion would be of
| concepts as nation or homeland.
| jehb wrote:
| Not to take this conversation too far off track, but the
| reverse argument could just as easily be made. _Companies
| are amoral entities, existing only to deliver whatever
| value their owners wish to extract. Governments,
| meanwhile, are just the manifestation of the will of the
| people who live in a place. Even currency itself is just
| a creation of the people by way of the government; no
| business has any particular right to it._
| beefield wrote:
| Not only just as easily, but much more easily assuming
| somewhat functioning democracy.
| rahkiin wrote:
| Because in ither countries you would not pay taxes at
| all...
| marcrosoft wrote:
| No they are a non profit.
| rahkiin wrote:
| If you have employees you still need to pay employee
| taxes
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe I'm too European, but ~5K out of ~44K total per month
| doesn't seem too bad. It's also based on what they earn,
| rather than a static sum, so seems totally OK for what you
| get back from it.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I think "company" is the word that belongs in quotation marks.
| Not in any demeaning way, but, amongst coders, building
| something like Lichess is about as idolized and likely as
| becoming a YouTuber is for kids.
|
| Also, the reality of trying is probably gonna suck super hard
| and require work and focus beyond what most people would ever
| be willing to do.
|
| But it sure is easy to imagine how great it could be.
| darepublic wrote:
| Creating something good and open source is not a delusional
| dream imo. Whether it catches on is another matter. But even
| a relatively modest following is a very fine result. I first
| learned of lichess some years ago when I was looking to make
| my own chess UI and discovered their high quality open source
| chess library
| jstummbillig wrote:
| The special thing about Lichess is not that it's good and
| open source, but that it actually pays an okay-ish salary
| to work on fulltime, while upholding all those lofty goals.
| It's an actual job. Without the whole thing being paid for
| by FAANG.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >but that it actually pays an okay/ish salary to work on
| fulltime, while upholding all those lofty goals.
|
| He pays himself a fairly low salary for the work he is
| putting in.
| timeagain wrote:
| Not really for you to decide, right? How much of your
| wage would you cede to not have any management? People
| answer that question differently.
| nomilk wrote:
| Fascinating. Looks like the cost per game is $0.00028, or about
| $1 per 3,500 games.
| johndhi wrote:
| why are the developers' salaries so low? $60k a year??
| freeCandy wrote:
| That is not a low salary for France, which is where the devs
| are.
| datpiff wrote:
| https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/france
| 0xDEF wrote:
| That site inflates salaries because it oversamples devs who
| work remotely for American companies. For example the site
| claims Ukrainian devs make $57k a year.
| solardev wrote:
| That's how much I was paid as a dev in Chicago. I loved that
| job and would do it again in a heartbeat. It was for a
| midsized educational nonprofit, and I was one of the highest
| paid workers there already (excluding the C suite). We got so
| much shit done every day, and I learned and grew so much.
| Amazing coworkers too.
|
| My next job paid $100k and had me working way way less,
| barely utilizing my skills. It was a bigger company that was
| very poorly managed. I spent more time there arguing about
| Jira points than actually developing anything. My skills and
| mental health deteoriated. It wasn't worth it.
|
| Seems like Lichess hit that sweet spot of paying a livable
| wage (in a country where social services are actually a
| thing) while providing meaningful work on a passion project.
| Most developers aren't so lucky!
| capableweb wrote:
| In most places in the world, that's nowhere near a low salary
| for a developer.
| Tmpod wrote:
| That's a very high salary in a lot of places, perhaps the
| developers don't feel the need to get 100k+/year...? .-.
| spiderice wrote:
| That's.. one way to look at it. Should read "perhaps the
| company doesn't feel the need to give developers
| 100k+/year".
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, "the company" in that case is the "main programmer"
| being paid.
|
| And then one has to consider value of social security
| provided when comparing with other countries. Health
| insurance, retirement funds, ...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The amount they spend on server costs should be an eye opener
| to most enterprises who are spending 10x more and have 100x
| fewer users.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Kind of fascinating that their biggest cost is site moderation!
| This seems... odd for a site whose main mechanic really isn't
| social networking.
| TylerE wrote:
| There is all kinds of player bad behavior that needs to be
| manually verified - cheating is the obvious one, but there's
| also smurfing, excessive sandbagging, clock abuse (e.g.
| letting your clock tick down to zero in a loss, just to be
| annoying).
| lelanthran wrote:
| What's smurfing and sandbagging?
|
| EDIT: I ask because I was once accused of smurfing (I'm
| only a casual player) in the chat during the endgame.
| mlyle wrote:
| Smurfing is when you disguise yourself as a noob on an
| alternate account when you are really more skilled.
|
| Sandbagging is related: deliberately losing to play
| people with lower ratings.
| faaabio1618 wrote:
| I might be wrong, but I think it's considered moderation (at
| least some of) the anti-cheating controls in place.
| [deleted]
| wirrbel wrote:
| I play regularly on lichess. I got insulted a couple of times
| in the game chat. Looking at the scale of lichess, I am sure
| it adds up.
| patrickdavey wrote:
| Have you looked at "Zen mode"? It removes the chat while
| you're playing ... you'll still see any insults after the
| game though ;)
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| I've never ever looked at the chat. And knowing that it
| costs money, and quite a lot, to moderate that, I'll never
| report anyone. It's just vanity. I don't care what you
| write to me. I just beat you in the game. Just cry it out.
| There you go.
| absoflutely wrote:
| I report these people in the hope that other players
| don't have to experience their hateful comments.
| zackb wrote:
| Me too, but it's still much better on lichess than
| chess.com in my experience. Also, cheating is not as bad on
| lichess
| tech_ken wrote:
| Chess players are some of the saltiest people on Earth,
| people can get really mean in chat. Also cheaters galore
| Tenoke wrote:
| The saltiness is much, much less than in some games
| (shooters, mobas) but a portion of every playerbase thinks
| they are the worst one even if they are not.
| tech_ken wrote:
| Extremely good point, I don't really game outside of
| online chess so I can't say that I have a very wide
| sample pool. TBH the chat I used to see when my brother
| was playing League blew any chess experience I've had out
| of the water. I'd almost use a word beyond "salty" for
| that
| digging wrote:
| Goes to show you how difficult and demanding moderation truly
| is, and why popular sites/services routinely fail to do it
| effectively. It's a quite proactive process.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| That's an incredibly good point. I would think you'd need a
| pretty modest operation when it comes to that for a site
| like lichess, and the fact that it is the biggest expense
| really puts into focus the kind of scale the problem likely
| is at the bigger social media sites.
| robomartin wrote:
| I wish there was legislation to prevent TV manufacturers from
| turning TV's into ad-spewing digital signage in your home. It's
| completely out of control.
|
| Yes, sure, you can, in some cases, plug in an external streaming
| device and, depending on the system, side step their incredibly
| abusive home screens full of ads and tracking. This might not be
| 100% possible on all devices. More importantly, you paid good
| money for a TV. You bought a TV, not a surveillance device and
| digital ad system to hang on your wall.
|
| I am not one for heavy-handed government regulation, yet, this is
| so far out of control that it likely needs it.
|
| The reason this is serious is because consumers have no control
| whatsoever. Also, most consumers have no idea what's going on. I
| have watch people innocently use home screens to search or click
| on things they don't know are ads. When you explain it to them,
| for the most part, they are incredulous. In a lot of cases they
| dismiss it with comebacks such as "you are just being paranoid",
| etc.
|
| Companies like Vizio have introduced features where you get to
| upload your pictures to their servers to then share with others.
| Their TOS very clearly states they retain the right to
| effectively use those pictures as they see fit, including having
| employees look at them, and more. This is just crazy. People have
| no idea what is being done to them.
|
| I highlight this because browsers on computers receive a lot of
| attention, while, TV's seem to be in this wild west mode where
| the manufacturers do anything they want with every update. Since
| you cannot install software to block anything, they are free to
| abuse and monitor your entire family as they please. This is
| wrong.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >More importantly, you paid good money for a TV.
|
| I doubt it. The profit margins on TVs are tiny, with some even
| negative with the hopes that the advertising revenues put them
| in the positive in the long run.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding...
|
| Maybe the high end OLED TVs from Sony/Samsung/LG that sell for
| $1,500+ earn some money, but otherwise, it is a pretty
| cutthroat business that is not likely to earn you any money. As
| evidenced by the fact that only a few companies even bother
| being in the business, with no new entrants.
| greedo wrote:
| I can think of plenty of new entrants in the last two
| decades:
|
| HiSense TCL Vizio BenQ
|
| Vizio has a 17% gross margin. Just because they mismanage
| their money doesn't mean I have to put up with their sob
| stories about not making $$.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Gross margin is not relevant here, profit margin is.
|
| Benq is qisda, and it is a very established ODM/OEM. They
| have a measly profit margin of 3%. But they also sell a lot
| of other electronics than just TVs.
|
| Hisense has been selling TVs since the 1980s, and has a 6%
| profit margin, although I don't know how trustworthy the
| Chinese financial figures are. But they also sell a lot of
| other non TV items.
|
| TCL is relatively new, although they started LCDs more than
| 15 years ago. But again, they sell more than just TVs. They
| have the highest profit margin at 10.7%, assuming their
| numbers are correct.
|
| Vizio seems like the best company to see how much selling
| TVs earns.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-
| computers/tvs/tv...
|
| >"For many years, TV making was limited to the few large
| consumer-electronics companies that could afford the
| investment," says Paul Gagnon, senior research director for
| consumer devices at Omdia, a market research firm. But then
| it became easier to source components, which in turn
| increased competition and lowered pricing and profits. "For
| some brands," he says, "the TV business here in the States
| was not profitable anymore."
|
| >Companies including JVC, Magnavox/Philips, and Toshiba
| exited the U.S. market, licensing or selling their brands
| to companies in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere looking to
| break into the U.S. market.
| hairui wrote:
| can't wait for the Lichess for the Go world
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