Lichess is Being Politicized

Update:

Shakriyar Mamedyarov commented on Vasif Durarbayli's post:

"I instantly deleted my @lichess account when I heard that Lichess has included the so-called "Artsakh Republic" (a separatist entity), and disrespected my country and my nation. I will never play in Lichess again. I will not join any of the tournaments organized by the officials. I am protesting Lichess, and I call my compatriots to follow the same manner."

@Durarbayli said in #7:
> Political, devisive stances just create anoyance.
If you are so annoyed, why don't you close your account and go play on any of the multiple non-free, "non-political" chess platforms that are available out there?

Being free IS a political stance.

@Friedrich_Shams said in #23:
> Update:
>
> Shakriyar Mamedyarov commented on Vasif Durarbayli's post:
>
> "I instantly deleted my @lichess account when I heard that Lichess has included the so-called "Artsakh Republic" (a separatist entity), and disrespected my country and my nation. I will never play in Lichess again. I will not join any of the tournaments organized by the officials. I am protesting Lichess, and I call my compatriots to follow the same manner."

well he's nothing but a nationalist-chauvinist hothead with that. Oh, that's so terrible!

If a person welcomes you to their house and shares their food with you all the while not expecting anything in return, and then you find out that their political views don't align with yours, you are free to leave, but you have no right to complain.

Lichess is free for all.

The moment you stop giving people the right to express their ideals or identity, whether that means to remove or add certain flags, this baseline is touched. The fact that one person may feel touched by the choice of nation or conviction of another person does not affect this concept, it stresses it.

Furthermore I don't see how the decision to celebrate "pride" is harming anyone by any means. The accusation lichess stopped caring about chess and should return to a mere chess-platform is untrue and in the end lichess never was a mere chess-platform. It was the idea to give a home to everybody, not caring about differences but about similarities; not refusing, but embracing each other because of something, yet whichever belief or disbelief we might have in common. This idea naturally includes non-chess-related topics.

Lichess was, is, and will be for everyone.

@Durarbayli said in lichess.org/@/durarbayli/blog/lichess-is-being-politicized/ATIRm2gm:
> They opted to add the flag of "Artsakh," a “country” not recognized by any UN member state. I won't delve into the history of my country, but it's crucial to note that the display of this name and flag is offensive to my people.

@Durarbayli I understand your sentiment for this. And I confess that I don't have much context regarding Artsakh.

Now that being said, I fail to see why you guys are making such a big fuss out of this. Here's what I was able to find so far:

1. Artsakh or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is a conflicted and disputed land in the South Caucasus.

2. It is not recognized internationally by any country, including Armenia. However, for the past 30 years, international mediators and human rights organizations have made reference to the right of self-determination for the indigenous Armenian population.

3. Part of its territory is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

4. It has its own army and president.

5. The Artsakh country flag was added based on a custom request in this PR - github.com/lichess-org/lila/issues/11631

6. Although it is not internationally recognized, Lichess country flags are not limited to only those countries that are recognized internationally or by the UN.

7. Lichess is not supporting Artsakh or taking sides. It simply acknowledged its existence, which seems fair to me. Like it or not, it exists and whatever dispute you have with Artsakh won't make it go away magically.

What's exactly the issue here? If Lichess were to remove flags based on whether someone would find them offensive or not, they'd have to do the same for Israel/Palestine, Russia, Pirate, Transgender, and many more.

@Durarbayli said in #20:
> You may disagree with my suggestion, but one point is clear to me: we need definitive guidelines, rather than managerial decisions, to dictate which flags should be allowed according to their belief systems. It appears to me that the current approach is biased and hypocritical. I'm even prepared to go further to prove this by adding countries similar to Artsakh into the open code, and I am confident that they will not be accepted.

You do make a valid point here though and I agree with you that it'd be better to have some sort of guidelines based on which Lichess adds new flags. I am not sure if it's there or not currently.

@Durarbayli said in lichess.org/@/durarbayli/blog/lichess-is-being-politicized/ATIRm2gm:
> In contrast, Lichess's management chose to celebrate "Pride Month." They announced their intentions through a published article) and a tweet.

Then you go on and mention issues with self-identification and Lichess choosing to celebrate Pride month. Sorry, but they seem unrelated to the Artsakh issue.

1. What is wrong with self-identification? It's a chess website, not your passport. Why not let people be themselves the way they want to? Why is political or technical correctness necessary?

2. How is Pride related to Artsakh?

3. Nothing is 100% non-political or unbiased. We are chess players here, but we are still people. With our own views, concepts, experiences, and feelings. Do you realize that although you are criticizing Lichess for being political, there is a clear double standard because your own post regarding it is also political in a different way? :)

@Durarbayli said in lichess.org/@/durarbayli/blog/lichess-is-being-politicized/ATIRm2gm:
> For those of you who, like me, are indifferent to the personal lives of others, you may find it irritating that a chess platform is promoting an agenda unrelated to the game.

That's a very good perspective and I agree with you. But the reason why people promote feminism, LGBTQ, and other minorities is that there are a lot of discrimination and prejudices related to these, which is not only limited to the real world but also in chess. Moreover, we are a community here, and creating awareness could be thought of as a social responsibility for some. That being said, I do agree that sometimes a few proponents of these topics go over the board and create another problem, an example being an extreme feminist promoting hate for males. But this is a different discussion, from what I can tell, Lichess did no such thing.

All in all, I can understand some of your points, but for the most part, seems to me that you guys got butthurt over a petty issue and now making a big fuss out of it. In doing so, you brought up unrelated topics and mashed them together to support your claims, but under scrutiny, it falls apart and doesn't make much sense altogether.

Here's something about the Freedom of Speech:

> The right to offend is also part of this freedom. Every citizen is given the right to express their opinions without any issue. There are restrictions for the freedom of speech and expression but the right to offend is not considered under restrictions. This is because it is purely an opinion given in any matter.

And here is a great video in case you or anyone else is interested and can watch in an open mind:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UeJzbx1iu0

Cheers!

@sgtlaugh Thank you very much for taking your time and making a thoughtful comment.

1. Every "normal" country on the planet recognizes the territory as belonging to Azerbaijan. The only reason that region is not under Azerbaijan's control right now is due to Russia's intervention under the guise of "peacemaking." To draw a parallel, take Donetsk. It claims to be a separate country, but almost all "normal" countries perceive it as part of Ukraine.

2. Previously, Armenia occupied seven additional regions in addition to Garabakh. Azerbaijan tried to reclaim these internationally recognized territories through biased mediators, but without success. Eventually, we regained most of the occupied territory by force, excluding some parts of Karabakh due to Russian interference, as described above. Self-determination is often used as a buzzword by Western politicians. This point is debatable.

3. It is not partly, but fully recognized as Azerbaijani territory.

4, 5, 6: Nothing to add.

7. Things get tricky here! I'm not denying the existence of this so-called republic. However, its existence resulted from the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis, and its continuity is maintained by Russia. If you incorporate that flag, it paves the way for the inclusion of other disputed territories, like Donetsk. To avoid being hypocritical, such a move would need to be consistent. The country list should only include nations that enjoy some international recognition, as suggested in my blog.

Comparing the acceptance of Palestine, Israel, and Russia, for instance, seems absurd to me. All of them are widely recognized by other countries. Adding other flags could stir up debate. For instance, the transgender flag is included, would you add a flag for straight people too? This whole thing is beginning to feel like a farce to me. If you don't adopt a consistent approach, it reflects hypocrisy. Which I hate!

1. I don't have a problem with self-identification, as long as it doesn't force me to be part of this identity. I may or may not accept that.
2. Both positions carry political biases and reveal hypocritical stances.
3. I am an individual and only represent myself. Therefore, my political stance should not be compared with an organization that purports to represent everyone.

I answered other points of yours in my tweets. If you are interested please check them out.

twitter.com/durarbayli

Thanks, @Durarbayli for taking the time to answer my comment in great detail.

As I said, I don't have much context regarding the conflict so would refrain from commenting further on it without knowledge.

> Hello,

> The option is named "Country or flag", as people already mentioned in this issue, and we include famous non-countries like: Earth, Lichess, Pirate, UN, and others. This list of flags, most of them submitted and accepted in good faith by our users and developers, is not used by the United Nations as the basis to discuss which country is allowed to exist and which isn't, so please do not read more into this than we do when we accept new flags.

Quoting from the discussion in the original pull request (github.com/lichess-org/lila/issues/11631) on above, I think this nicely explains the position of Lichess on this. While I do agree that some form of consistency or guide while incorporating such changes would be nice instead of relying on good faith (which is subjective and could lead to controversy as in this case), I also believe this shouldn't be made into such a big deal as in to boycott Lichess or anything. It's a chess website that allows the Pirate flag, that alone should suffice to demonstrate it should not be taken too seriously. If someone wants to self-identify as a pirate, let them be. I suppose the same can be said for Artsakh. It does not necessarily have to mean anything more than that I believe, but that's just my two cents.

> Sorry, we're busy building a free chess website here. It's a lot of work and we have no time to engage in Internet debates. <3

As Thibault mentions in github.com/lichess-org/lila/pull/13240#issuecomment-1641584018, I believe it explains their stance on this.

@Durarbayli said in #29:
> 1. I don't have a problem with self-identification, as long as it doesn't force me to be part of this identity. I may or may not accept that.
> 2. Both positions carry political biases and reveal hypocritical stances.
> 3. I am an individual and only represent myself. Therefore, my political stance should not be compared with an organization that purports to represent everyone.

1. Agreed with it. I don't see how anybody is forcing anyone with self-identification here though. Looks to me like it is open and free for everyone to choose from.

2. Politics is a tricky thing. Politicians use almost each and every topic out there to manipulate people in their favor. That doesn't imply when these topics are discussed, there is a hidden agenda behind it, although sometimes there can be.

3. Fair point. In all fairness though, Lichess chose to represent everyone but never claimed to not have a voice or opinion of its own. And when you do that, you can never satisfy everyone. There is no right or wrong stance here, just a matter of personal choice is all.

I took a bit of a dive into history. Bergkarabach was populated mostly by armenians but by some other nations too - quite an inhomogeneous thing. Then the Soviets came in 1920 and decided to make it an autonomous region within the Azerbaijani soviet republic.
This external intervention seems like the major reason for Azerbaijan claiming the region.
When USSR disintegrated, the Armenians in Bergkarabach proclaimed Arzakh, and then Azerbaijan made war. with thousands of deads on BOTH sides.

This was from a serious, unbiased source, and it apparently contradicts some of #29. Which just shows the bias and the twist of truth coming from people in a conflict.

It's a bone of contention. Armenia claims it as its nation land (and Armenia doesn't recognize Arzakh because it was to incorporate Arzakh). Azerbaijan claims it as part of its territory. Religious antagonism matters as well.

From outside the whole thing just seems to be miserably pointless to me. Violence and hate are so pointless. People completely lose sanity over it. (see Mamedyarow)

Lichess did nothing wrong with the flags and doesn't act unfair. Note how many people wanted to have Russia's flag removed (or even Russian players banned) after the invasion. Lichess said no because Russia exists (yes, sadly, it does) and removing the flag would just create turmoil from Russian players. While it may create discomfort to see the Russian flag on profiles, we have to accept and deal with it, it's *our* discomfort. Similar story here - Lichess is not hurting your Azerbaijan identity by having Arzakh's flag around. This flag doesn't force you to anything. Any "hurt" attitude is nothing but *hypocrisy* and hatred.

And even if the flag were removed, some Armenian players will keep writing "Arzakh is Armenia" on their profiles.

@Cedur216 bro you don't know even how to spell so called country Artsakh's name and keep commenting about this topic. I don't know whats up with you . I will not enter any debate with u.