Why I have chosen not to renew my annual chess.com membership
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If you only read one section of this post, make it the final two paragraphs, especially if you are involved with site administration in any way.
I am going to point out something that other users have previously noted under site feedback: in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, chess.com took two actions. They released a statement condemning the attack, and they obscured the flags of Russia and Belarus. Meanwhile, there has been complete silence on the issue of the genocide in Gaza, and we have yet to see any sort of parallel action with respect to the US bombing Venezuela’s capital and abducting their head of government.
This second point is a recent development, so it is possible that something is forthcoming. However, there has been plenty of time for the site to react to the charge of genocide, which has been levelled by a UN special commission, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, B’Tselem (Israel-based), and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (Israel-based), among other IGO’s and NGO’s. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister due to alleged use of starvation as a weapon of warfare. There is a supposed ceasefire in place, but it is often violated. The idea that chess.com has refused to address this high-profile topic in any way is quite striking in the context of the site’s response to Russian aggression.
Any time I have seen this topic raised here, a moderator posts that this type of discussion is not allowed, and the thread is promptly locked. In fact, just before I posted this I saw that another user’s thread has been locked after they drew attention to the continued visibility of the US flag after it invaded another country. I expect the same to happen in this case.
What I want the site administrators to see is this: you created the context for this type of discussion. If the site had never taken a position on Russia and Ukraine, shutting down these questions under the auspices of maintaining political neutrality on a chess platform would be logically consistent. However, once an explicit stance on one political conflict is taken, silence itself becomes a position. Users will therefore question how the site decides which conflicts to address and which to disregard. To lock these threads and forbid user engagement with such topics (in the feedback section, no less) says that administrators can publicly discuss these matters but users cannot. Users will then have additional questions about why they are not permitted to raise questions about political topics on a site that has taken a political position. So here is my feedback: consistency matters. Either take no stances or provide a rational justification in response to queries about your stances (or lack thereof). Raising a topic then prohibiting continued discussion is a tactic beneath the intellect of aficionados of such a cerebral game.
Of course, I have now initiated a non-sanctioned discussion; providing this type of feedback is not permitted in the feedback section. So go ahead: lock this thread, but understand that dismissing an argument is not equivalent to countering it.