Recently, scratch.mit.edu and all subdomains were blocked from China. So my suggestion to allow 20,000+ users to be able to use Scratch is a China version of Scratch.

Mock-ups needed!

if it got banned it gets banned. it's very silly to make another site just for users in a country where their government banned a website.

even google was unable to do it because of pressure from the government iirc.

Jeffalo wrote:

if it got banned it gets banned. it's very silly to make another site just for users in a country where their government banned a website.

even google was unable to do it because of pressure from the government iirc.

Well other games banned from China have China versions permitted by China.

I'm gonna take a comment I made about another post that aimed to solve this issue.

VFDan wrote:

About your Make Taiwan and Hong Kong China suggestion, I believe I know the reason why it was banned in China. It's entirely plausible that it was banned directly, and that is a possibility. However, there is another possibility that I think is more plausible; China is banning TLS1.3 and ENSI traffic; this is because it's hard to check the domain name. I'm not sure if Scratch uses TLS1.3 or ENSI though…

VFDan wrote:

I'm gonna take a comment I made about another post that aimed to solve this issue.

VFDan wrote:

About your Make Taiwan and Hong Kong China suggestion, I believe I know the reason why it was banned in China. It's entirely plausible that it was banned directly, and that is a possibility. However, there is another possibility that I think is more plausible; China is banning TLS1.3 and ENSI traffic; this is because it's hard to check the domain name. I'm not sure if Scratch uses TLS1.3 or ENSI though…

Scratch does not us either TLSv1.3 or ESNI. It's also worth noting that ESNI is a very early technology and users must enable it themselves. It's a mechanism to try and stop censorship like this. TLSv1.3 I don't believe is blocked unto itself within the GFW, only when ESNI is enabled.

The CCP hasn't accidentally blocked Scratch, they have purposefully blocked Scratch specifically, due to Anti-CCP messages, and pro-Hong-Kong / pro-Taiwan messages on the site. Unless the ST prevents users from being able to speak in support of Hong Kong / Taiwan and prevents users from speaking against the CCP, it is possible Scratch will not be unblocked within China. Changing the country dropdown is not enough sadly.

For OP, unless the ST have enough people to make running and moderating a separate Chinese variant easier, then I don't think this suggestion is feasible for the ST.

Edit: It's also worth noting that TLSv1.3 on it's own does not bring any privacy advantage over TLSv1.2. ESNI is the feature they're blocking, but methods to bypass that have already been discovered.

ElsieBreeze wrote:

-snip

Due to this reason, this may be hard. Another method might be to make a offline editor download site for china.
and this |
v

Jeffalo wrote:

if it got banned it gets banned. it's very silly to make another site just for users in a country where their government banned a website.

even google was unable to do it because of pressure from the government iirc.

ElsieBreeze wrote:

VFDan wrote:

I'm gonna take a comment I made about another post that aimed to solve this issue.

VFDan wrote:

About your Make Taiwan and Hong Kong China suggestion, I believe I know the reason why it was banned in China. It's entirely plausible that it was banned directly, and that is a possibility. However, there is another possibility that I think is more plausible; China is banning TLS1.3 and ENSI traffic; this is because it's hard to check the domain name. I'm not sure if Scratch uses TLS1.3 or ENSI though…

Scratch does not us either TLSv1.3 or ESNI. It's also worth noting that ESNI is a very early technology and users must enable it themselves. It's a mechanism to try and stop censorship like this. TLSv1.3 I don't believe is blocked unto itself within the GFW, only when ESNI is enabled.

The CCP hasn't accidentally blocked Scratch, they have purposefully blocked Scratch specifically, due to Anti-CCP messages, and pro-Hong-Kong / pro-Taiwan messages on the site. Unless the ST prevents users from being able to speak in support of Hong Kong / Taiwan and prevents users from speaking against the CCP, it is possible Scratch will not be unblocked within China. Changing the country dropdown is not enough sadly.

For OP, unless the ST have enough people to make running and moderating a separate Chinese variant easier, then I don't think this suggestion is feasible for the ST.

Edit: It's also worth noting that TLSv1.3 on it's own does not bring any privacy advantage over TLSv1.2. ESNI is the feature they're blocking, but methods to bypass that have already been discovered.

Yes, I found a translated version of a video from a Chinese source: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/431287/?page=3#post-4326818

Look, China already had over 10 types of Scratch Chinese version that made flame wars in the Chinese forums. I don't think making a new one will help. Just creating more trouble and boycotting.

Wouldn't this be illegal? If what you say is true, and this website is banned in China, would it even be legal to make a banned website?

Plus, who would moderate it? The Scratch Team? As far as I know, they speak English, and having to check reports in Chinese would be easy to translate, but constantly?

Even if it is legal to make it, do you think people will use it if it is banned?

No support. This wouldn't be okay.
We have to get main Scratch back in China somehow and stop Four Degrees from suing the Scratch Team.

Closing because to be honest this is a bad idea and -FreeScratch- has a point.

#FreeScratch
#UnbanScratch