Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

358 125 3 years ago

ssss11• 3 years ago

I like this.

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• 3 years ago

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.

timetraveller262• 3 years ago

And many GM's prefer Lichess, like Hikaru in this clip casually roasting Chess.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvfOR9MFyc

PUSH_AX2• 3 years ago

What's the issue with sentry?

janalsncm• 3 years ago

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.

thiht• 3 years ago

Sentry is not a tracker

jurassicfoxy• 3 years ago

Lichess is truly amazing.

I am a monthly Lichess donator, and you too can donate via https://lichess.org/patron

0xDEF2• 3 years 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.

SeanAnderson• 3 years ago

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.

treme• 3 years ago

props to founders & gov of France that has special funding for such institutions.

marcrosoft2• 3 years ago

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.

lukhas6• 3 years ago

(I'm a Lichess sysadmin & trustee)

So far France has given us exactly 0 euros and 0 cents, but has required us to hire and pay an accounting company to certify our books due to the level of donations we're receiving.

We could maybe argue that being allowed to exist as a non-profit is something France deserves kudos for, if you're in a good mood.

johndhi• 3 years ago

why are the developers' salaries so low? $60k a year??

freeCandy• 3 years ago

That is not a low salary for France, which is where the devs are.

datpiff• 3 years ago

https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/france

capableweb3• 3 years ago

In most places in the world, that's nowhere near a low salary for a developer.

Tmpod• 3 years ago

That's a very high salary in a lot of places, perhaps the developers don't feel the need to get 100k+/year...? .-.

solardev• 3 years ago

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!

ChicagoBoy112• 3 years ago

Kind of fascinating that their biggest cost is site moderation! This seems... odd for a site whose main mechanic really isn't social networking.

faaabio1618• 3 years ago

I might be wrong, but I think it's considered moderation (at least some of) the anti-cheating controls in place.

wirrbel2• 3 years ago

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.

digging• 3 years ago

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.

TylerE• 3 years ago

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).

tech_ken2• 3 years ago

Chess players are some of the saltiest people on Earth, people can get really mean in chat. Also cheaters galore

nomilk• 3 years ago

Fascinating. Looks like the cost per game is $0.00028, or about $1 per 3,500 games.

larodi• 3 years ago

Being honest is if not the best quality a company can have in 21st century.

jstummbillig2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

PUSH_AX2• 3 years ago

I can't seem to find the income. Is this listed anywhere or is just the outgoing "open"?

lukhas6• 3 years ago

It's not listed in this page because it varies month-by-month, but we publish our yearly books in a lichess blog post and on the government "Journal Officiel":

2022: https://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/pages/associations-deta...

2021: https://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/pages/associations-deta...

The TL;DR is that donations so far exceed our expenses, thanks to the generosity of our userbase, and thanks to the hundreds of volunteers doing work for free.

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

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!

dietr1ch• 3 years ago

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.

freitasm2• 3 years ago

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.

JamesBarney• 3 years ago

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.

stepupmakeup• 3 years ago

Question from someone who has zero knowledge about managing infrastructure: is all of that absolutely necessary? Only one is marked "we can afford to lose", but $228/mo for a monitoring server seems extremely excessive. Even $44 for "private communcations" (I'm assuming something like RocketChat) surely have cheaper alternatives?

lukhas6• 3 years ago

Lichess sysadmin here!

We're self-hosting most of our infra on bare-metal, on the best price/quality hosting provider I know of (OVH). I doubt you could store ~1TB of metrics going back 4 or 5 years on fast NVMe storage for less than this in the cloud.

blastro• 3 years ago

ornicar if you're reading this, just know we all love you.

coldpie• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

I use 1Blocker and love it.

inversetelecine• 3 years ago

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.

quyleanh• 3 years ago

Use Adguard for Safari and install an adblocking DNS service profile. This combo is the best for iOS user.

hxii• 3 years ago

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).

jakobdabo• 3 years ago

You can also use DNSCloak, which can act as a VPN, and proxy all DNS requests to a trusted DoH server, like AdGuard.

ziyao_w• 3 years ago

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.

c-fe2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

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.

Tao33003• 3 years ago

Not once did I win an iPod for punching the monkey.

Eduard• 3 years ago

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.

r053bud• 3 years ago

We need more Lichess' in the world!

bilekas• 3 years 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.

Airsinner2• 3 years ago

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_• 3 years ago

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.

hazrmard• 3 years ago

Does anyone know the difference between personalDNSfilter (recommended by lichess) and Blokada for DNS-based blocking? I use the latter on my phone.

ormax3• 3 years ago

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.

vsgherzi• 3 years ago

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.

robomartin• 3 years ago

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.

lotsofpulp3• 3 years 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...

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.

greedo2• 3 years ago

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 $$.

93po2• 3 years ago

I use plex on apple tv and i guess i rarely see a promo at the top of the apple tv when i rarely happen upon the home screen. and plex bugs me to upgrade to premium for stuff i don't need rarely. but other than that it's an ad-free experience (minus product placements) that i really enjoy.

matheusmoreira4• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is a serious problem with modern TVs. I've read that LG panels can be hacked but that was years ago. Maybe they patched whatever vulnerability was being exploited.

neilv• 3 years ago

Tracking sells our personal information to increase advertisement effectiveness

Saying this downplays the invasiveness and threat. That's not the only purpose.

cwales95• 3 years ago

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.

canistel• 3 years ago

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.

Tao33003• 3 years ago

I see Frysk is on there. That game is wild.

UberFly• 3 years ago

Why do so many fail to also mention Pi-Hole? :(

timetraveller262• 3 years ago

Maybe it's a bit too much for non-tech savy users

miki1232112• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

lelandbatey• 3 years ago

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.

miki1232112• 3 years ago

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.

Timshel• 3 years 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 ?

matheusmoreira4• 3 years ago

Whatever. Let those spammy ad-funded web sites die. Nothing of value will be lost. It won't kill the web, it will fix it. Everyone should do their part to fix the web by driving advertising profits to zero.

The web was supposed to have real web sites made by real humans who actually have something to say. Not all this worthless ad impression maximizing clickbait spam. Remember, people used to pay for servers just to make their texts available over the internet. No one paid them for it.

Tao33003• 3 years ago

The manifesto at the end is a thing of beauty. Cuts through the crap and really gets to the point.

bad_user• 3 years ago

Did you know Lichess is built in Scala 3 ;-)

SergeAx• 3 years ago

Lichess and it's author are so cool that I subscribed to monthly donation even though it gives me literally nothing.

matheusmoreira4• 3 years ago

I already had massive respect for Lichess but this is just incredible. I wish them all the success in the world.

hairui• 3 years ago

can't wait for the Lichess for the Go world

Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

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