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Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers
- ssss11 3y agoI like this.
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoInteresting 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoAnd many GM's prefer Lichess, like Hikaru in this clip casually roasting Chess.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvfOR9MFyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvfOR9MFyc
- PUSH_AX 3y agoWhat's the issue with sentry?
- janalsncm 3y agoI’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.
- thiht 3y agoSentry is not a tracker
- jurassicfoxy 3y agoLichess is truly amazing. I am a monthly Lichess donator, and you too can donate via https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron
- 0xDEF 3y ago+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 3y ago[flagged]
- SeanAnderson 3y agoLichess 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/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview 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.
- treme 3y agoprops to founders & gov of France that has special funding for such institutions.
- marcrosoft 3y agoExcept if you look at their financials they are paying a huge tax being a French company. Their resources would go further if they left.
- rahkiin 3y agoBecause in ither countries you would not pay taxes at all…
- marcrosoft 3y agoNo they are a non profit.
- rahkiin 3y agoIf you have employees you still need to pay employee taxes
- spinningslate 3y agowhich 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"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kevincox 3y ago[flagged]
- Devasta 3y agoSo 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.
- elashri 3y agoI 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.
- benatkin 3y agoIt isn't theft, that's a gross exaggeration. Alas it's a popular one. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/ad-blocking-is-stealing,news-20962.html 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.
- blastro 3y agoornicar if you're reading this, just know we all love you.
- coldpie 3y agoIs 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 3y agoI use 1Blocker and love it.
- inversetelecine 3y agoYep 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.
- quyleanh 3y agoUse Adguard for Safari and install an adblocking DNS service profile. This combo is the best for iOS user.
- hxii 3y agoBlockBear 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).
- jakobdabo 3y agoYou can also use DNSCloak, which can act as a VPN, and proxy all DNS requests to a trusted DoH server, like AdGuard.
- ziyao_w 3y agoThibault (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 3y agoNot once did I win an iPod for punching the monkey.
- c-fe 3y agoOn 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoYeah, 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.
- r053bud 3y agoWe need more Lichess' in the world!
- bilekas 3y ago> 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.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago[flagged]
- Etheryte 3y agoThis 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.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoVisiting 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.
- blackmesaind 3y agoA 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.
- hazrmard 3y agoDoes anyone know the difference between personalDNSfilter (recommended by lichess) and Blokada for DNS-based blocking? I use the latter on my phone.
- ormax3 3y agoboth 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.
- vsgherzi 3y agoFor 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.
- robomartin 3y agoI 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 3y ago>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/profit-margins 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 3y ago
- neilv 3y ago> Tracking sells our personal information to increase advertisement effectiveness Saying this downplays the invasiveness and threat. That's not the only purpose.
- cwales95 3y agoI 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.
- UberFly 3y agoWhy do so many fail to also mention Pi-Hole? :(
- timetraveller26 3y agoMaybe it's a bit too much for non-tech savy users
- canistel 3y agoTrivia: Lidraughts was created taking inspiration from Lichess, and this is acknowledged in https://lidraughts.org/about 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.
- Tao3300 3y agoI see Frysk is on there. That game is wild.
- miki123211 3y ago> 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 3y ago> 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.
- Timshel 3y ago>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 ?
- lelandbatey 3y agoThis 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.
- Tao3300 3y agoThe manifesto at the end is a thing of beauty. Cuts through the crap and really gets to the point.
- bad_user 3y agoDid you know Lichess is built in Scala 3 ;-)
- SergeAx 3y agoLichess and it's author are so cool that I subscribed to monthly donation even though it gives me literally nothing.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoI already had massive respect for Lichess but this is just incredible. I wish them all the success in the world.
- hairui 3y agocan't wait for the Lichess for the Go world