does chess.com discriminate against russia

You can always leave your country.

Russia should be shamed at the very least.

The flag is a political symbol.

I would say yes. Since the Russian flag has been censored. I really hate to get political but there does seem to be an inherit political bias against Russian nationals simply based on Russia itself. If the U.S. were to invade countries (and it has!), you would never see such corporate willpower to censor it. IMO, most of the censorship is based on State dollars though and that's an important distinction. It may not be chess.com desires to censor, but if the U.S. government is labelling people who don't censor the flag as "domestic terrorists" (objectively, they're not, but the U.S. government is Stalin 2.0 right now), then chess.com might face significant legal reprimands if it doesn't. Sadly.

A flag is not an inherently political symbol. A flag indicates where you are from. The fact that we disagree on this and yet share the same flag is proof that a national flag is inherently not a political symbol, otherwise, it would mean we would share the same political opinions.

Really? Was the U.S. flag censored for Iraq? For Lebanon? For Syria? You've gotta be kidding me. Shame Russia for invading a country but the Stars and Stripes hail high and fly? I want to vomit.

Anymore than the U.S. for it's imperialism the last three decades? If the decision of chess.com to censor the Russian flag is their private decision, they should reverse it as it is discriminatory against both Russians and Russia. If they want to shame countries for invading other countries, they should have censored the U.S. flag too. It's objectively discriminatory and your fear of Russians is inexcusable. Innocent Russians have had a genocide wrought on them because of idiots like you.

Flags represent countries run by governments.  Flags are a political symbols.

I agree, in b4 the lock, lol

Of course its ok to kill a million innocent iraqis citizens in repayment for only 5000 American deaths caused by a religious group 

Something tells me you been watching a little too much CNN

You are confusing "A flag is a political symbol" with "A flag is only ever a political symbol."  The second may not be true, but the first is widely acknowledged.  It's true that flags can be used by different people in different ways -- they're not stable, univocal political signifiers.  And sure, it does have simple classificatory value in some cases.  But to pretend that a flag does not also often carry polical significance is simply to deny the way the world works.  Many institutions have therefore felt it's appropriate to hide the Russian flag on accout of Russia's actions.  You may not disagree with this decision.  Perhaps you think these institutions are being too hard on Russia, or perhaps you even think that Russia is in the right.  Those would be intellectually coherent reasons for objecting (they're reasons I would strongly disagree with, but that's beside the point). But to pretend that it shouldn't be done because a flag never holds political meaning is risible.

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