thibault said in #1:
> For a few years now, we have been able to "follow" other players.
> Players we follow are sometimes referred to as "friends".
>
> What is this feature for?
>
> * Get a list of online friends for quick spectating or challenging (bottom right of the screen)
>
> * Get timeline notifications when a friend:
> - starts streaming
> - publishes a blog post
> - likes a study
> - posts in the forum
> - hosts or joins a simul
> - joins a tournament
> - creates or joins a team
>
> * Filter who can send us private messages, challenge us, or invite us to studies (lichess.org/account/preferences/privacy)
>
> * Share our insights data (lichess.org/insights/thibault/acpl/variant)
>
> Thanks to these features, we can stay in touch with our friends, keep an eye on our favourite content creators, and control our privacy on the site.
>
> That is what the follow system is for, and it's working quite well, and it's here to stay.
>
> Of course it has an infrastructure cost. With 24 million follows, and counting, there is a lot happening on the servers to keep everyone notified about their friends activity.
> That cost, we're willing to pay it, because it's worth it. So don't worry about it.
>
> One very minor thing about the follow system had to change, though. When I implemented it, some years ago, I displayed the number of followers in our profile page, without thinking much of it.
> I was naïve, of course. We're chess players, and we'll do anything to grow visible numbers.
>
> For example, visible rating makes people cheat at chess. We can't really hide ratings, so instead we spend a lot of time developing anti-cheat algorithms, and even more time manually reviewing reports and hunting cheaters.
>
> Similarly, the visible followers number makes people create multiple accounts, beg for followers in chat rooms,
> spam our inboxes, pollute our forums.
> It makes the entire website worse, and it creates unnecessary work for our moderators.
> It creates artificial connections between players who wouldn't follow each other, if it wasn't for the followers number.
> These meaningless follows create as much server load as the meaningful ones, but they serve no purpose. What a waste!
>
> There is a very simple solution that keeps all the benefits of the follow system, while fixing its problems:
> removing the visible followers number.
>
> Without it, we can still connect with friends and content creators; and the incentive to game the system is gone.
>
> I know we lost something in the process. I used to have a glance at the number of followers on someone's profile,
> to unconsciously evaluate their "worth". I do miss it. But I think that will pass quickly.
> For that price, we're going to have a saner social space, with fewer spams, fewer beggars, less multi-accounting, less wasted server usage, and less moderation needs.
>
> To view the list of players you follow, use the "Friends" link in the right side of your profile page. Moving that link away from where the followers number used to be, was a blunder from me, and generated a lot of confusion.
>
> I always read the players feedback in the forums, so thank you for letting me know how you feel about this.
>
> Have great games and great human interactions on Lichess.
Thanks for explaining so well thibault . You changed my view about this followers count being removed.
> For a few years now, we have been able to "follow" other players.
> Players we follow are sometimes referred to as "friends".
>
> What is this feature for?
>
> * Get a list of online friends for quick spectating or challenging (bottom right of the screen)
>
> * Get timeline notifications when a friend:
> - starts streaming
> - publishes a blog post
> - likes a study
> - posts in the forum
> - hosts or joins a simul
> - joins a tournament
> - creates or joins a team
>
> * Filter who can send us private messages, challenge us, or invite us to studies (lichess.org/account/preferences/privacy)
>
> * Share our insights data (lichess.org/insights/thibault/acpl/variant)
>
> Thanks to these features, we can stay in touch with our friends, keep an eye on our favourite content creators, and control our privacy on the site.
>
> That is what the follow system is for, and it's working quite well, and it's here to stay.
>
> Of course it has an infrastructure cost. With 24 million follows, and counting, there is a lot happening on the servers to keep everyone notified about their friends activity.
> That cost, we're willing to pay it, because it's worth it. So don't worry about it.
>
> One very minor thing about the follow system had to change, though. When I implemented it, some years ago, I displayed the number of followers in our profile page, without thinking much of it.
> I was naïve, of course. We're chess players, and we'll do anything to grow visible numbers.
>
> For example, visible rating makes people cheat at chess. We can't really hide ratings, so instead we spend a lot of time developing anti-cheat algorithms, and even more time manually reviewing reports and hunting cheaters.
>
> Similarly, the visible followers number makes people create multiple accounts, beg for followers in chat rooms,
> spam our inboxes, pollute our forums.
> It makes the entire website worse, and it creates unnecessary work for our moderators.
> It creates artificial connections between players who wouldn't follow each other, if it wasn't for the followers number.
> These meaningless follows create as much server load as the meaningful ones, but they serve no purpose. What a waste!
>
> There is a very simple solution that keeps all the benefits of the follow system, while fixing its problems:
> removing the visible followers number.
>
> Without it, we can still connect with friends and content creators; and the incentive to game the system is gone.
>
> I know we lost something in the process. I used to have a glance at the number of followers on someone's profile,
> to unconsciously evaluate their "worth". I do miss it. But I think that will pass quickly.
> For that price, we're going to have a saner social space, with fewer spams, fewer beggars, less multi-accounting, less wasted server usage, and less moderation needs.
>
> To view the list of players you follow, use the "Friends" link in the right side of your profile page. Moving that link away from where the followers number used to be, was a blunder from me, and generated a lot of confusion.
>
> I always read the players feedback in the forums, so thank you for letting me know how you feel about this.
>
> Have great games and great human interactions on Lichess.
Thanks for explaining so well thibault . You changed my view about this followers count being removed.
