Was just thinking how nice it is to be on social media and not be bombarded with ads!
Its amazing how this is the first site in years that I dont need to install blockers or scroll through bs or be so cynical with what I read.
Fellow Australians, rejoice in this little space we have from corporate bombardment
Look at lichess.org vs chess.com.
Lichess non-profit, and is maintained by a couple of devs funded purely by donations.
Chess.com has hundred of employees and requires tens of millions of annual revenue to break even. It has investors that expect yearly growth.
The user experience is not much different.
Wikipedia is another great example of a massive website that is run as a non-profit, is ad free and has stayed true to its original purpose.
Chess.com has something like 10million active users per day, I don’t think they’re directly comparable. Plus the problem space is much, much simpler with an online cheese game than federating thousands of servers with millions of users.
To be clear, I never said that this was impossible, just that we need to keep expectations in check and that nothing is free.
And Wikipedia?
We should strive to create a platform that isn’t captured by the interests of advertisers. You’re stating the obvious that nothing is free.