Terms of service nits

[pesho-ivanov]

The terms of service of Lichess are rated grade B by TOSDR -- this is very good but not great. Since I am very happy with lichess (and actively donate to it), I think that the criticism is related to lack of clarity related to anti-cheating rather than maliciousness. I am wondering if we can alleviate the issue by more specific statements in the ToS so that we also serve as an example to others.

Here I copy the full list of reasons:

1. Your account can be deleted without prior notice and without a reason
2. Instead of asking directly, this Service will assume your consent merely from your usage.
3. You are tracked via web beacons, tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting, and/or device fingerprinting
4. The service may keep a secure, anonymized record of your data for analytical purposes even after the data retention period
5. Your use is throttled
6. Usernames can be rejected or changed for any reason

[benediktwerner]

Can you give some concrete examples? I don't really see much that can be improved here. The points basically all seem either just true or the ToS is already pretty clear and they added the somewhat inaccurate label anyway, presumably because it's just the closest one there is.

[pesho-ivanov]

I guess what could be cleaner is that the decisions on rejecting or deleting an account can be done according to the ToS instead of "at our sole discretion".

But I also talked to some more friends in the last days and it seems that Lichess' ToS are quite reasonable and the limitations may indeed be necessary for fighting cheating and staying off-court.

Please feel free to close the issue.

[schlawg]

"at our sole discretion" seems like language used to discourage trolls from escalation attempts rather than legalese. It's pretty clear. Isn't the goal for ToS to be calmly reassuring yet otherwise indecipherable?