In September of 2020, Chess.com staff spontaneously changed the name and pictures of a club called "Dump Trump". Their reason was, as stated by then-moderator Zoran

"Club name "DUMP TRUMP" is inappropriate as well as it was the club picture and club description.

Thus, that's the reason why the club was disabled."

That's almost understandable as a breach of the Terms of Service, as explained by Zoran later.

"As for the clubs, we try not to engage too much in their politics, unless there is a breach of the law or our site ToS. Now, everyone is allowed to have their views, we don't go into that too much, but public display of it is not allowed on our site. When I say public display, when it comes to clubs, it would be their name, profile picture, background and public description.

We may be a little lenient when it comes to positive display, but we can't tolerate negative ones. It might look like this, for example, "Trump Fan Club" or "Biden Fan Club" we might allow. But "We Don't Like Trump" or "We Don't Like Biden" certainly wouldn't."

That sounds nice, and I think we could all agree to that even if we would rather be allowed to have whatever club names and pictures we wanted.

Except that it's not exactly that simple (this seems to be a recurring theme)

There was another club, "Barack NObama" which was blatantly negative towards President Obama in its name and description.

said description: "If you are NOT a fan of Barack Obama, come on in and join! He even has a fake birth certificate. he destroyed america's food supply, contaminated their water, and destroyed the state of Massachusetts. What could happen next?"

This group existed for over a decade before this particular incident with the anti-Trump group.

Once it was pointed out to Zoran, he promptly changed the name and description. It can be found here: https://www.chess.com/club/barack-group

Again: that group existed for eleven years without any objections from Chess.com or anyone else.

At about that time, another group called "Trumpeters for Trump" was also attacked by Zoran. He changed the name to "Donald". If it wasn't already obvious, "Trumpeters for Trump" is hardly a negative name for a club. Zoran said that "we might allow" a name like Trump Fan Club or Biden Fan Club, but obviously that meant he might allow specifically a club with the exact title of Trump/Biden Fan Club. Evidently, having a clever name for your political group is not allowed. That group now exists under the name "Let Freedom Reign"

Another thing happened with censorship was the forced changing of usernames and profile pictures.

@PetecantbeatmeSLFL had his username changed by Chess.com after the events of January 6, 2021 without warning, and without his knowledge or consent. His username was trump2020maga1. He tried logging in one day, and he found that he was unable to. He then looked at his account which was in the friends list of someone else, and saw that his username was changed. He then logged in and changed it to his current username. No message was sent from Chess.com before, during or after they changed his username. Less importantly but still noteworthy, his profile picture was removed, which was similar to this image:

@LazyDog24 had this profile picture.

After mods discovered a troll club of his, they removed his profile picture, citing "political reasons" due to the presence of a Soviet-style hammer and sickle. This triggered multiple people to use the same profile picture in protest, with the same results. Again, you may take the stance of "it's against the Terms of Service so meh", however this is not as simple as it initially appeared to be. To explain, here are other infractions of Chess.com ToS, which remain still. These are far worse than the examples given above of clubs, usernames and profile pictures that reference Trump, Biden, Obama, or even a Shibu Inu with a Soviet ushanka.

Cast your gaze upon these:

[insert links and screenshots of clubs which blatantly go against the ToS]

And these wonderful profiles which obviously don't go against the Chess.com Terms of Service:

[insert links and screenshots of profiles which are in blatant contravention of the ToS]

[insert closing statements and conclusion]

reference hypocrisy, double standards, and inconsistent enforcement of rules

Strategic Air Command

Super Admins