Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement

in the video the take take take guy says, speaking about their app's commercial side " we also think that there should be a willingness to pay for getting better at any sport or game such as chess..."

Fortunately, there are people just as passionate as he is who who have proven the contrary to be true every single day.

Great education, great, amazing services and products of all kind, can be free. Lichess has proven this and there will be more and more in the future, not less, no matter how many get sold out.

Please let lichess never get sold out or lessen its potential because of these types of thinking. No offense.

Bad news, making me really sad. Peter Thiel is toxic, a real "No-Go" and therefore his involvement with TTT is unacceptable. Hence the cooperation of TTT with lichess is unacceptable in my eyes. I really loved the entire free and open concept of lichesss so much as it was and I am afraid it will never be the same anymore. The lichess platform and community were big and good enough and I do not understand the need for a step like that - not with someone, somehow involved like Peter Thiel. I need to think about still playing on lichess. For sure I will stop watching any TTT videos or live streams. What a mess! Too bad. :-(

Even a Tesla would be a perfect car I would not buy or use it since it is from Elon Musk.

See also: Wikipedia: Peter Thiel

First thing I did when reading the headline was checking the post date, and then be very sad and worried that this is not some April fools joke. I have a bad feeling about this.

@awvdh said ^

First thing I did when reading the headline was checking the post date, and then be very sad and worried that this is not some April fools joke.

I have a bad feeling about this.

What could go wrong though?

As you already mentioned potential connections to Peter Thiel in the Blog Post, TTT was (Co-)founded by Magnus Carlsen, who in turn has done some shady deals with Saudi Oligarchs in the past. Can you also ensure, that they won't have any influence on Lichess's values?

Thus far, I've been a proud donator to Lichess for 3years+ with it being the only digital service I pay for monthly.
In light of this partnership I have paused my donations, partly because that amount might not make a difference compared to the TTT money, and partly because I am also scpetical on whether this partnership will benefit Lichess.

I will stand by the phrase "paused my donations" though, and if it turns out the partnership is beneficial or at least non-harmful for Lichess, I will resume them at a later point.

Sorry for the comment-spam, but in the blog post, you mention several possible scenarios that could happen from this cooperation with the first one mentioned being:

1. TTT makes their own play zone and is successful - Lichess squished between two large corporate entities.
   In other words, Lichess would be screwed and a noticeable amount of the playerbase could have been taken away by TTT. And despite this being the first scenario mentioned, there is no further comment on it, which I personally find very concerning.

That scenario was only possible had they NOT partnered with TTT right?

Mention of that scenario is laughable and the risk for that happening was never real. Lichess only mentioned it because they want some justification for their choice of partnering with TTT, so they created a false scenario to argue for it. The real reason is of course something else. Money. TTT clearly put enough money for Lichess to turn a blind eye towards all the other things concerning the partnership. This is a very clear net negative for Lichess in all terms, but the (likely huge about of) money compensates for it.