I just thought I'd give a shoutout to lichess, not so much because it's a great site to play chess, but rather as an example of a successful site with a philosophy very similar to Hubski.
Lichess started some years ago and has consistently increased its user base, becoming one of the main sites for playing chess online.
They are open source and started taking donations last year to help with the servers. It has worked pretty well it seems.
Ah, lichess. This brings back memories... I went through a phase where I was obsessed with chess and I would be on lichess every single day. One day I punched my laptop in a fit of rage after losing a match. RIP laptop. My precious ebooks collection... gone. That was when I realised I had a problem. I didn't even like chess that much -too tactical for my taste- but I was addicted. Haven't been on lichess ever since. Chess - not even once.
Uh, it is really easy to recover everything off of a laptop if you only break the screen. In fact, as a Linux user, the last several times I had to get a new laptop (usually due to power failures) I haven't bothered to reinstall, just swap out the hard drive.
I know what you mean, but people take chess way too seriously. It's just a fun board game, or it should be.
They recently had a 24 hour chess tournament. Unfortunately their servers couldn't handle it and it was cancelled a little after it began. Hopefully when they get better servers they will attempt it again. From what I did play I can say it was fun.