LICHESS’S DIGITAL STALINISM

On 24 April 2022, I received the following message from Lichess:

A moderator deleted one of your posts for this reason: inappropriate behavior. Please read Lichess' Forum-Etiquette: lichess.org/page/forum-etiquette

Please note the following weird facts concerning that message:

1. It doesn't indicate which of my Forum posts was deleted.
2. It also doesn’t indicate which Forum Etiquette point that post violated.
3. It doesn’t say that my Lichess account will be muted.
4. The Russian invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022. On the Lichess Forum, people discussed that war and the sports sanctions on Russia and Russian chess players extensively. My views deviated from the mainstream. Lichess sent its message exactly two months after the Russian invasion began, which hardly seems coincidental.

Lichess’s ideologically selective censorship

I don't want to discuss my political views at length here. I believe my views are pretty neutral, objective, moderate, competent and well-founded.

Concerning the sports sanctions imposed on Russia, my position has been consistently the following:

1. Politically motivated sports sanctions are wrong.
2. If such sanctions are applied, they must be applied generally and not discriminatively.
3. Broadly applying politically motivated sports sanctions would ban many countries. It is a reductio ad absurdum of imposing any politically motivated sports sanctions.
4. FIDE had not sanctioned any countries before. For example, the US occupied Iraq, but no sanctions on US chess players followed.
5. A few years later, Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip appeared, but no chess sanctions on Israel or Israeli chess players followed.
6. Therefore, evidently, sports sanctions have been applied selectively and used as a political weapon against certain countries.

Not only did FIDE apply sports sanctions selectively, but major chess platforms did as well. For example, ChessDotCom and Lichess banned the Russian flag but never the US or Israeli flags.

For years, I have received no civilised and reasonable criticism of my views. Instead, I have received countless angry public replies, including outright slander, false accusations, and sharp personal attacks.

It also happened on the Lichess Forum.

Lichess has never punished such personal attacks if the cause seemed to support Ukraine. Some of the posts that have not been censored have been clearly on the verge of extremism, terrorism and calling for genocide.

I think it's possible, but I am not sure, that I finally replied sharply to some very unintelligent attackers.

Anyway, Lichess announced that it deleted one of my posts.

However, they may have deleted a post that wasn't sharp while letting another, one that was indeed sharp, go unnoticed.

Anyway, I regard it as clear that Lichess’s censorship is heavily politically biased.

The same has happened on several other chess platforms, and I, as a philosopher, have completely abandoned several of them because even the moderators have been deeply uncivilised.

Unannounced suspension

Anyway, I don't remember receiving any message that my Lichess account was muted. The message history also doesn't include any such announcement.

Finally, I found out my account was muted. I couldn't make any Forum Posts visible to others.

I felt insulted and did not use Lichess for years. I don't remember exactly when.

Finally, I turned back. I found no information on my page saying my account was still muted. I could write Forum Posts. I naturally thought I was only muted temporarily.

Wrong. Lichess lets you write a post, but it doesn't make it visible to others. So it is deceptive, since nothing indicates you're muted, and you can still write posts and reply to posts. You simply don't know you are invisible.

I regard it as hidden censorship.

It is deeply immoral.

Worse, it turned out that I was muted on three accounts:

1. My forum posts were invisible to others.
2. My game chat was invisible to my opponents and others.
3. My chess blog posts were invisible to others.

The others saw that I have a blog but have not made any posts:

I was never informed about these weird features.

Note that my game chat has always been absolutely correct. In a sense, I was a professional chess player decades ago. It is absolutely impossible that I would say something inappropriate in the game chat.

Note also that my chess blog never discussed politics. However, I sometimes discussed chess sanctions and opposed the politicising of sports.

I don't think arguing against politicising sports means using a chess blog to defend one’s political views.

It is not me, but major chess platforms like ChessDotCom and Lichess have used chess to spread political propaganda.

Appeal

Finally, more than four years later, I got the idea to check Lichess’s appeals page.

Only on the appeals page did I see explicit information that my account had been muted.

What logic is this? You go to the appeals page only if you already know your account has been muted. You don't go to the appeals page if you don't know you need to appeal.

Worse. I wasn't clever enough to take a screenshot.

My appeal was satisfied. However, the system does not show me any information about the previous suspension. So I cannot quote exactly how the system said I was suspended.

Since 21 October 2026, the appeals page has shown the following picture:

Your account is not marked or restricted.

Again, why does this account status information appear on the appeals page and not where all other account data are shown?

Formally, I was forced to apologise for a forum post deleted more than four years ago, without knowing which of my posts had been deleted or exactly what I wrote there.

Worse. I had many serious questions for Lichess, but I asked only a few. Lichess answered only one question, and even that answer was not complete.

Below is the screenshot of my appeal and the reply I received:

What next?

Lichess wrote:

We trust that you realize your mistakes and that you will not repeat them again. Therefore, we are restoring chat privileges.

Kindly note that this is your final chance.

There is a nuance, however. The appeal process was the final blow.

The trust is not mutual. I will never trust Lichess again.

I don't think people like that ever realise their mistakes.

I believe that Lichess has lost its final chance to communicate with me.

I have been a member of Lichess (with my current account) since 2017.

For a long time, my profile has been something like this:

The next decisions are as follows:

1. I do not accept challenges.
2. No one can start a new conversation with me.
3. No one can invite me to study.
4. I do not share my chess data.
5. I will never visit the Lichess Forum again.
6. In-game chat with me is impossible.
7. This article is my last post on my Lichess blog.

For a while, I'll probably still play chess on Lichess because it is free and there are many strong opponents.

Some other chess platforms like ChessDotCom are expensive, but not better. Worse, such platforms publish even more political propaganda.

However, I am trying to minimise the use of Lichess.

My use of Lichess’s purely chess features in no way indicates my acceptance of Lichess’s political demagoguery.