are people getting diamond membership for no reason? did i miss an event?

why is everyone getting diamond membership seemingly for free? accounts inactive for years have been getting diamond membership very recently... why???

now at first i only noticed this while scrolling through my past daily games, i was looking for players i played against a couple years ago so that maybe i could play them again. i noticed a few of them got diamond membership recently. i thought to myself, "cool! they're becoming active right at the same time as me, what a coincidence!"
maybe im an idiot, but check out just how many of these people got it very recently despite having not been on this website for actual years:
https://www.chess.com/member/jeffjohnsonii
https://www.chess.com/member/teesh27
https://www.chess.com/member/dan_blll
https://www.chess.com/member/non11
https://www.chess.com/member/rmachal7
https://www.chess.com/member/v-rock22
https://www.chess.com/member/mmmsas
https://www.chess.com/member/rafi75
https://www.chess.com/member/chess9653

but then it turns out that my friend(s), who made a (seemingly) one-off account--played one game and never touched this place again--got a diamond membership very recently??
https://www.chess.com/member/minniethebear
https://www.chess.com/member/abcalpha

and i also went to add a friend that was of a similar scenario, they touch this place every now and then, and they had the membership, and they told me they had no idea why they had diamond membership.
https://www.chess.com/member/cyandreams

most of them are on the same date, but they're all within the same day range. if it was an event, why wouldn't it go to active players? or is this supposed to incite players from long ago to come back and play? heck, if that'd be the case, and if i knew that, i wouldn't've come back for LITERALLY 5 more days and i would've gotten free diamond.

I have got gold membership, and chess.com upgraded it to diamond for me because a lot of the premium features were acting like I still had gold

but you're an active player, let alone you paid for gold membership in the first place. these people who have not been online for years are getting it out of nowhere

yeah, although I didnt pay it was gifted, I agree they should give the membership to active people

Some random guy or somebody might be giving random people diamond memberships for no reason at all

perhaps someone dropped a gratuitous donation, say $10k (which would give around 700 people free diamond, though i feel like there's much more people than just that), but i feel like chess.com couldve and wouldve funneled that into people that would've actively used and appreciated it

so was there some sort of event that had occured?

Yeah

or maybe the person who randomly gave the memberships could have went to a active club full of members and gave a few free memberships like that there

of the 12 people i exampled, only 1 was in a club, so there's no way

I know

completely random

when you confirm your email they give you A few questions and If you answer you have chance to get year of diamond, so maybe that

except all the people i listed are inactive, with the exception of one, who does not know why they have it.

It's apparently a marketing method trying to bring back inactive members.

So if I go inactive I get a chance to get free membership?

I guess it's possible but I just looked at one of those members and they had been inactive for over a year so ....

Imagine going on chess.com for the second time in your life (the last time you went on was two years ago) and realizing you have a diamond membership 

And then you realize it only lasts for 1 month.

well frankly that would just make me upset, considering i joined back about 5 days before i would supposedly get free diamond

It may not have been everyone that had been inactive. Likely it was a subset.