Should I report this?

Communication on Lichess

Since the earliest days of Lichess, it has been possible to communicate with other users. There are many available options on Lichess to communicate with your opponents, friends, fans, and coaches via direct messages, arena chat and forums.

Good communication is key to a healthy social environment and can enrich the user experience. Unfortunately, not all communications via these channels are polite, friendly or courteous.

To keep Lichess fun for everyone, we have put in place communication guidelines. We are currently updating them so they become even clearer. Our moderation team works hard to enforce these guidelines with actions including post removal, timeouts, warnings, site-wide communication bans, account closure, and permanent site-wide bans. You may not always be able to see the effects, but work is ongoing behind the scenes all the time.

You can help alert us to where these rules have been broken by using the report feature. There are now new reporting categories available where you can specify the reason why you are reporting someone. In the rest of this blog, you can read about the new report options, some high-level statistics of actions we take to keep Lichess safe and friendly, and some highlights of tools we offer to help your experience on Lichess. We hope you find them useful!

When communication goes wrong

Sadly, like on any online platform where communication is possible, some users may experience abuse, harassment, or stalking. Online abuse is not tolerated in Lichess, whether it is in tournament chat, forums or direct messages. We understand that this can be very frightening and distressing for users and we want you to know the steps to follow if ever that happen.

If you have received messages that feel threatening, insulting or harassing, you should not engage further with that person but should report them.

We are especially mindful of vulnerable users such as minors and minorities. Kid mode should be used by children, and those under the relevant legal age are assumed to have kid mode enforced by a parent or legal guardian.

Inappropriate communications include any private or public chat which makes another person feel distressed or attacked. Some non-exhaustive examples are abuse, harassment, public shaming, cheating accusations, extremism, trolling, racism, sexism, or bigotry. In addition to being against our Terms of Service, these communications may also amount to illegal behaviour and we will cooperate with relevant law enforcement authorities when necessary. You can find more information by checking our Chat Etiquette, Forum Etiquette, and Blog Etiquette guidance.

If you feel you have been a victim of online abuse, harassment, or stalking on Lichess, we want to hear about it! Use the report function, so that we can take action to stop it, prevent further occurrences, and keep you safe.

We take harassment and stalking reports extremely seriously.

We believe there is no place for this kind of behaviour on Lichess, and we operate a zero-tolerance policy in this regard.

Expanded list of reportable behaviours

To help us deal efficiently and appropriately with communication infractions, we have expanded the list of reportable behaviours for users. For fair play violations see also our Fair Play page and Terms of Service (ToS).

When reporting a user from their profile, the forum, or your inbox, you will see the following options:

Cheat - We prohibit the use of any external assistance to be used during one of your ongoing games, which would have the effect of improving your knowledge, ability to calculate, or otherwise give you an unfair advantage over your opponent. Examples of cheating include but are not limited to, using a chess engine, opening books, endgame tablebases, and receiving move recommendations from another person or software (including human commenters whilst streaming or social media services), and certain software or extensions at our discretion. In correspondence games only, you may use the Lichess opening explorer, plus any other chess books or opening databases. For clarity, we have summarised our fair play rules in a table.

Stalling/Leaving game - This is when a player chooses to keep the clock running or leave the game, forcing their opponent to wait for them, rather than playing on or resigning. These are all considered bad sportsmanship,

Sandbagging - This is when a user artificially deflates their rating, such as by resigning early, losing, or drawing without putting any effort into a game. Their opponent may be an active and willing participant, but it can also happen without the opponent's knowledge.

Boosting - This is when a user artifically inflates their rating, such as by arranging wins against other users, or by knowingly playing users who are trying to artificially deflate their rating (sandbagging).

Match Fixing - Pre-arranging the result of a match or game rather than the result being determined naturally.

Verbal Abuse / Cursing / Trolling - These include any private or public chat that makes another person feel distressed or attacked. Some non-exhaustive examples are abuse, harassment, public shaming, cheating accusations, extremism, trolling, and cursing or swearing at someone.

Violence/Threats - Threats of violence or harm to another user are not acceptable. It does not matter whether these threats be carried out or not. No one should use threatening or violent language on Lichess. This includes threatening other users with harm (real-world or online), inciting violence, bullying, harassment, stalking, trolling, intimidation, extortion, blackmail, impersonation, and doxxing.

Harassment/Bullying/Stalking - These are unwanted behaviours that can cause alarm and distress to other individuals, or put them in fear of violence. They can cause significant harm to individuals. Psychological impacts can include mental and emotional distress, isolation, and feeling unsafe both online and offline. Harassment and stalking often involve perpetrators creating multiple user profiles to contact individuals against their will and to be omnipresent in their lives. Perpetrators may attempt to circumvent blocking and moderation by creating new accounts and their associated user profiles, thereby continuing to harass, stalk or threaten victims and survivors, causing significant fear and distress. Creating new accounts to circumvent a ban of any kind is against our TOS.

Suicide/Self Injury - We do not allow content or behaviour that depicts, glorifies or encourages suicide or self-injury. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, there is help available. You can find your closest help centre at Befrienders Worldwide, or crisis helpline in the list of suicide crisis lines on Wikipedia.

Hate Speech / Sexism - We do not allow any behaviour or content that discriminates, mocks, or promotes hatred against any individual or group; or encourages others to do so, either directly or indirectly, because of their age, race (or perceived race), ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity (or expression), religion or religious affiliation/beliefs, physical or mental disability status, caste, tribe, or immigration status.

Spamming - We do not allow spam; sending irrelevant, unsolicited or repetitive messages in forums, public chat, or direct messages.
In public chats:

• Do not say things like "Heeeeeelllllllooooooo", "asdasdlaisdjalsdjasdljö", "hahahahahahahahahahhaha", "???????????????????".
• Do not post links to tournaments or teams that are not related to the event.
• Do not post links to your stream or someone else’s stream.
• Do not post messages like "Join my team ...". You can advertise your team or other links in your own profile or team.
• Do not beg for followers, subscribers, or Patron Wings.

Messages like "Hello", "Good evening", "How are you ... ?", and "How does ... work?" are perfectly fine.

Inappropriate username - Usernames are public and displayed all over the website, meaning children and vulnerable users will read them. A username chosen with the intent of generating negative emotional reactions will be closed. This includes sensitive topics, disparaging usernames, sexism, racism, bigotry, adult language, or usernames otherwise likely to cause harm or offence.

Other - If the reported behaviour does not fit into any of the above categories.

Choosing the correct category is important in order for your report to be processed correctly. Lichess takes the safety and comfort of its users seriously. We would encourage you to report any case where you think someone has breached the Terms of Service.

We would especially encourage you to report any incidents of harassment, bullying, stalking, hate speech, sexism, or cases where you feel there is a risk of suicide or self-harm to either yourself or another user.

Mitigating unwanted interactions/distractions

There are several options available to mitigate unwanted interactions and distractions that might take your focus away from your game. These include Zen mode, Kid mode, turning the chat off, changing your user privacy preferences, blocking users and as a last resort, using extensions with customisable user styles to hide or change aspects of the Lichess website.

Zen mode

Zen mode is an option to get rid of distractions so you can focus on the board during games or puzzles.

It removes all superfluous elements:

• player names
• player ratings
• site navigation

And only displays what you need to play:

• chessboard
• clock
• game controls

To activate it, click on your username, go to Preferences > Display, and scroll down to find the 'Zen Mode' option. Alternatively, you can press the “Z” key to activate it while playing.

It looks like this:

Kid mode

Kid mode is a special feature designed to allow children to access Lichess safely. When turned on, your child will be able to play games against other users, whilst not being able to communicate with them in any way besides chess moves. Chat functions are turned off. There is no access to forums, blogs, live streams or videos. The only exception is that the child's teacher will be able to send them messages, only if the account was made by that teacher through Lichess' class feature.

You will know your child is using Kid mode because of the signature smiley face visible in the upper left of every Lichess page.

Your child will be unable to turn Kid mode off without knowing the account's password. This is why we recommend that parents and teachers keep control of the password themselves. Simply log in to the account for them and select "Keep me logged in". They should now be able to use Lichess without needing to log in every time. Kid mode can be turned on and off in the account settings.

You also do not have to worry about exposing your child to adverts or having them tracked by online trackers. In fact, no Lichess user needs to because Lichess does not have any ads or trackers and never will.

Turning Chat off

If you do not want to see the chat in a game, an arena, or a broadcast, you can toggle it off using the green button:

Chat is hidden when the green button turns grey, and visible when it is green.

User Privacy Preferences

You can adjust your privacy settings in the main user menu to control who can follow, challenge and message you, and also who can invite you to studies. You can also choose who to share your chess insights data with.

Blocking users

If do you not wish to receive direct messages from someone, you can block them using the menu on their profile, or the “block” button in your inbox. If you report a user, they will be blocked by default (you can still unblock them if you want).

Extensions to hide or change aspects of the Lichess website

How to Install User Styles
Custom user styles allow you to edit a portion of a webpage known as CSS. You can change the way a webpage looks without changing what it does. You could remove a portion of a website you do not want to see or move a button from one place to another.

There are browser extensions that allow you to quickly and easily add and remove user styles. The user style manager we recommend is called Stylus.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our report FAQ covers many frequently asked questions, such as:

• What are reports for?
• Why does Lichess need me to report?
• What should I write in my report?
• What happens to my report?
• Do I get informed about the actions taken?
• I got a message someone got banned, but I still see their account is open

Reports Summary for 2022 and 2023

Below is a summary of the hard work carried out by the moderation team at Lichess during the past two years:

Our thanks go to all of you who have reported suspect behaviours, making Lichess a fairer and safer place!

Links

Communication Guidelines • lichess.org
Chat Etiquette • lichess.org
Forum Etiquette• lichess.org
Blog Etiquette • lichess.org
Report a user • lichess.org
Report FAQ • lichess.org
Fair Play • lichess.org
Terms of Service • lichess.org
Kid Mode • lichess.org
User Styles• lichess.org
CSS • Wikipedia
Protecting people from illegal harms online • Ofcom
Befrienders Worldwide • Befrienders
List of suicide crisis lines • Wikipedia