On August 14th, 2020 (today as of writing this), China's government has blocked access to scratch.mit.edu and all related subdomains from being viewed within China. This is a big situation; for reference, about 3 million scratchers have their accounts registered as being from China. Do you think that the Scratch Team plan on making any announcements to the Scratch community about this and how do you think this affect the moderation of content particularly around social issues regarding China?

Important Posts:
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/4326818/ - from DownsGameClub - regarding the video that's believed to have triggered this, post #50
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/4329769/ - from Lankybox01/Basic88 - informal “first impressions” response from Za-Chary on the topic, post #199

Update: Information points towards a video on a Chinese video site published on August 11th as the catalyst for the CCP's decision to block this website. A lot of the commenters have recognised that this is an issue with the Scratch website and community, not Scratch as a whole so the Scratch software should be fine.

Okay, when I saw that it almost gave me a heart attack. Anyways, onto the question. I really hope they make an announcement on this. Also, for your last question, the moderation around that will probably be more relaxed.

I have not seen any evidence about such announcement being made by the Scratch Team.

According to an issue on Scratch's GitHub, Scratch might have been blocked there because it recognised Taiwan and Hong Kong (which the Chinese government do not want to be recognised as independent) as separate locations from China.

Oh gosh.
So… all the accounts from china (20K) will be inactive.
But the good news is: The Chinese people are allowed to use VPNs

LankyBox01 wrote:

Oh gosh.
So… all the accounts from china (20K) will be inactive.
But the good news is: The Chinese people are allowed to use VPNs

I'm pretty sure using a VPN is illegal in China.

garnet-chan wrote:

LankyBox01 wrote:

Oh gosh.
So… all the accounts from china (20K) will be inactive.
But the good news is: The Chinese people are allowed to use VPNs

I'm pretty sure using a VPN is illegal in China.

As google says:
China has no laws on the citizens from using VPNs. There is no chance of anyone being charged with a crime simply for using a VPN. That being said, Chinese authorities do make it difficult to get your hands on a working VPN. VPN provider websites are blocked.
(source)

LankyBox01 wrote:

Oh gosh.
So… all the accounts from china (20K) will be inactive.
But the good news is: The Chinese people are allowed to use VPNs

The only problem is that Scratch would not be able to work if the Chinese Government ever decide to ban VPNs.


As for the rest of the topic, I think one way this could be solved (even though the Scratch Team might reject it), is to have Chinese users have locations such as Taiwan, Hong Kong etc. display as ‘China’ to them.

Well what's wrong with making Scratch china edition?

SausageMcSauce wrote:

As for the rest of the topic, I think one way this could be solved (even though the Scratch Team might reject it), is to have Chinese users have locations such as Taiwan, Hong Kong etc. display as ‘China’ to them.

what if they put taiwan or something in their about me

Oh no. Goodbye Xamuil2.

SausageMcSauce wrote:

I have not seen any evidence about such announcement being made by the Scratch Team.

I was more predicting whether or not the ST would formally address this on the site

garnet-chan wrote:

LankyBox01 wrote:

Oh gosh.
So… all the accounts from china (20K) will be inactive.
But the good news is: The Chinese people are allowed to use VPNs

I'm pretty sure using a VPN is illegal in China.

How I think it works is that people can get prosecuted for doing certain things online where they happen to be using a VPN to access that section of the internet but not just because they own a VPN program. (it's been a while since I last did research on this topic)

Bye bye Zyte then

sorry about that，I should talk to u calmly You always said “ be respectful to a scratcher or a group.”(in community guidelines) Did you respect China? Or you don’t even care about that group because scratch is a place with full of racism and hate. Scratch is a community that the official can’t Even obey their own rules

Here’s some advice for make the scratch community to a place that only has love and peace

when a new scratcher singn-up ， Change country to region/location

Add a report option that can report Sensitive topics/Sensitive political topics
Trust me, Kids shouldn’t see thise topics.
They have freedom of speech but kids shouldn’t see that people fighting each other because of political reasons

Scratch just make a mistake and I can forgive it in any second, but if they don’t realize what will happen if they don’t fix it, they will never fix it

First of all, don't cuss or you could get reported. And some people may not want to change it to their actual location. Also, Hong Kong is kinda an independent country and the people living there want it to stay that way.

Report for what? Point out the mistakes of others？

gavinye2018 wrote:

Report for what? Point out the mistakes of others？

Well, Scratch is mostly 6 to 14 year olds, so you have to keep it family-friendly and no cussing is allowed.

gavinye2018 wrote:

ThatOneWeirdDude wrote:

china doesnt deserve respect but ok

I mean， if this is the place for racist, then I Don’t know what should I say. Good luck turning more kids into racist

He means the CCP not the people.

pavcato wrote:

gavinye2018 wrote:

ThatOneWeirdDude wrote:

china doesnt deserve respect but ok

I mean， if this is the place for racist, then I Don’t know what should I say. Good luck turning more kids into racist

He means the CCP not the people.

Sorry about that

Hong Kong is not a country, but in my opinion it is very different from the mainland China that I think it is fine to put it as a separate category. Also, Antarctica is in that option despite not being a country, too.

We should respect all countries if we can, but we should respect human rights and freedom of speech first. There are some countries which restricts women rights, but that does not mean we have to ban women in this website - and same thing goes for Hong Kong.

What can we do