-PastelPastry- wrote:

The obvious reason is because America, China are both enemies and because America Blocked TikTok because they do not like China, China blocked scratch because Americans made it. India are Allies with America and Pakistan are Allies with China

Scratch don't sue this and ppl pls don't report this I'm trying to tell the truth.

I don't think we should speculate on this rumor too much. I get TikTok - the younger generation is quite hooked to it and it creates huge impacts to the Chinese corporation that runs it.

But blocking a website made for children (and, as the video mentioned earlier, has been used by Chinese nationals in programming curriculums) is somewhat absurd. It doesn't give China the advantage in anything - perhaps preventing any “unwanted messages” or “movements” from spreading, but that's it. Scratch might lose 5% of its user base, but there's nothing being lost except for fiscal and diversity related things as far as I know.

Edit: added video link

DownsGameClub wrote:

-PastelPastry- wrote:

The obvious reason is because America, China are both enemies and because America Blocked TikTok because they do not like China, China blocked scratch because Americans made it. India are Allies with America and Pakistan are Allies with China

Scratch don't sue this and ppl pls don't report this I'm trying to tell the truth.

I don't think we should speculate on this rumor too much. I get TikTok - the younger generation is quite hooked to it and it creates huge impacts to the Chinese corporation that runs it.

But blocking a website made for children (and, as the video mentioned earlier, has been used by Chinese nationals in programming curriculums) is somewhat absurd. It doesn't give China the advantage in anything - perhaps preventing any “unwanted messages” or “movements” from spreading, but that's it. Scratch might lose 5% of its user base, but there's nothing being lost except for fiscal and diversity related things as far as I know.

Edit: added video link

I watched the video, and it said scratch was supposedly spreading rumors about china.
This may be untrue, but by stating that, you made it right, by saying that.

Basic88 wrote:

If the Scratch Team were to make an announcement on this, what would they say?

Well, Paddle2See did say something about it if I remember correctly. He said something along the lines of “just because you have communist rules doesn't mean we'll change ours to conform to yours.”

DancingNekoGirl wrote:

Basic88 wrote:

If the Scratch Team were to make an announcement on this, what would they say?

Well, Paddle2See did say something about it if I remember correctly. He said something along the lines of “just because you have communist rules doesn't mean we'll change ours to conform to yours.”

I will say, with all honesty, with this in mind, this is more of an issue on China's side then Scratch's. Yes, there's some things that could be done, such as by changing “Country” to “Location”, but otherwise Scratch is doing what they believe is right, and if others don't like it, then I suppose they have the right to not use or ban this service. I'd hate to see this being a permanent thing, I'm just voicing my thoughts-

bump

bump

Can someone who speaks Chinese give me the basic idea of what the video said? I am very curious as to what's so bad about Scratch, they flat-out banned a kid's coding website from their entire country. I can't imagine it's just the Hong Kong/Taiwan thing, is it?

BearSlothCoding wrote:

Can someone who speaks Chinese give me the basic idea of what the video said? I am very curious as to what's so bad about Scratch, they flat-out banned a kid's coding website from their entire country.

Okay, let me rewatch the video and tell you about it…

Someone said something bad about China: China looks like the bad guy in the economy activity (Written by non-Chinese users)
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are surprisingly listed as countries. There's even content about Free HK, Free Macao, and Free Taiwan. In “Learn Chinese” projects, the three places aren't included in the map used.
Scratch, being so bad, is even listed in the Computer / Technology textbook.

Actually, the whole video is inaccurate, as they said,

Professionals wrote:

Scratch 主要是给 6 到 18 岁的儿童。
Translation: Scratch is mainly for 6 to 18 years-old.

If China wants to censor certain political views, that's their government's problem, not Scratch's. What is Scratch's problem is how the platform has been toxically politicized, leading to flame wars, constant political projects, bullying over political beliefs, and blatantly offensive content. I've especially been seeing lots of anti-China content in the wake of corona. Actual reasonable arguments are rare in these projects. There's just pages of flaming.

DownsGameClub wrote:

Essentially, the video is about how the Scratch Website supposedly promoted things that tended against China's current polices, especially the “One China Principle,” in which the only “China” that exists is the Mainland and it governs its territories (i.e. Hong-Kong, Taiwan, and Macau). The video describes different complaints about the different ways this policy has been breached by Scratch, particularly:

• Taiwan and Hong Kong are listed as separate regions from China (a big no-no when dealing with anything China these days…)
  
• Projects and Studio promoting the current Hong Kong's movement (“Five Demands, Not One Less”)
  
• Projects failing to put Taiwan on a map of China, especially on a “Learn Chinese” project (this part confuses me the most - they should have done more research in understanding the project wasn't directed at defaming China in any sense)
  
• Projects putting the blame on China's government for various things, such as the US-China Trade War (was mentioned in the video, but this is outside the One China Policy stuffs)

Honestly, I'm very surprised they decided to follow through on the decision to ban Scratch. But I guess they thought the free speech that was allowed on the website went a bit too far…

I kind of understand this. So basically, user-generated content about Hong Kong and Taiwan is too much for them so they decided to use the great firewall ban hammer on the entire website? That's a logical solution, instead of, you know, contacting the ST and explaining how that could be (and apparently is) offensive.

Byron_Inc wrote:

BearSlothCoding wrote:

Can someone who speaks Chinese give me the basic idea of what the video said? I am very curious as to what's so bad about Scratch, they flat-out banned a kid's coding website from their entire country.

Okay, let me rewatch the video and tell you about it…

Basically the video said stuff about how Scratch has Anti-China stuff on it.
Like including Hong Kong as an country, as well as Macau and Taiwan, and the Free HK movement on Scratch.

Edit: Too late… *sigh*

Byron_Inc wrote:

BearSlothCoding wrote:

Can someone who speaks Chinese give me the basic idea of what the video said? I am very curious as to what's so bad about Scratch, they flat-out banned a kid's coding website from their entire country.

Okay, let me rewatch the video and tell you about it…

Someone said something bad about China: China looks like the bad guy in the economy activity (Written by non-Chinese users)
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are surprisingly listed as countries. There's even content about Free HK, Free Macao, and Free Taiwan. In “Learn Chinese” projects, the three places aren't included in the map used.
Scratch, being so bad, is even listed in the Computer / Technology textbook.

Actually, the whole video is inaccurate, as they said,

Professionals wrote:

Scratch 主要是给 6 到 18 岁的儿童。
Translation: Scratch is mainly for 6 to 18 years-old.

Thanks, still doesn't make sense though. If it's offensive, just tell the ST. I'm sure they'd ban that stuff if it offends an entire country.

BearSlothCoding wrote:

Thanks, still doesn't make sense though. If it's offensive, just tell the ST. I'm sure they'd ban that stuff if it offends an entire country.

Probably the China government don't know that they can talk to the ST.

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

hi i'm chinese
In China, vpn is illegal

Tim-Fang 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

hi i'm chinese
In China, vpn is illegal

It's not, stop spreading Rumors然后如果你是中国人你应该能看得懂这个：
-VPN目前为止不违法，不过中国人应该都知道，所以我猜你是假中国人。

Tim-Fang 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

hi i'm chinese
In China, vpn is illegal

No, it's not. All the working VPN providers are blocked, but it's not illegal to use an VPN.

However, I'm not using an VPN, but actually using some cool thing that does things to let me do things.

Byron_Inc wrote:

BearSlothCoding wrote:

Thanks, still doesn't make sense though. If it's offensive, just tell the ST. I'm sure they'd ban that stuff if it offends an entire country.

Probably the China government don't know that they can talk to the ST.

Mmm… I don't know if they were willing to exercise the options in the first place.

I feel in many ways Scratch has a reputation of defending certain movements that express people's rights. Things like BLM and LGBTQ+ are things that the Scratch Team supports.
Unfortunately, certain people will disagree with those rights. Regarding this matter, sovereignty over Hong Kong and Taiwan have been the huge ones, lately, especially in the wake of the Mainland's National Security Law and Taiwan gaining international attention over its successful COVID-19 response.

With that in mind, I don't think they're going to easily (let alone successfully - we all know how well they stand by their verdicts - ) convince the Scratch Team to take down those projects. We've already seen Paddle's alleged response to the matter, which to me suggests that they aren't going to budge. I somewhat expected that.

As I mentioned earlier, what does China have to lose by blocking a website made for Children? The TikTok bans that were instated, along with other bans, are quite strategic - they actively disrupt the service and force others to find others. That means bad news those companies, especially when those apps are very popular. To the CCP, Scratch is just a website that allows too much free speech and nothing more. Sure, it might make school officials frustrated that they have to find an alternate program, but it's just a minor inconvenience to them at the end of the day.

While I can't completely say what Scratch is dealing with now, I doubt that their funding is going to be affected by this matter at all. It might not give enough exigency to change their policies.

DownsGameClub wrote:

Sure, it might make school officials frustrated that they have to find an alternate program, but it's just a minor inconvenience to them at the end of the day.

*codemao noises*

gavinye2018 wrote:

Tim-Fang 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

hi i'm chinese
In China, vpn is illegal

It's not, stop spreading Rumors然后如果你是中国人你应该能看得懂这个：
-VPN目前为止不违法，不过中国人应该都知道，所以我猜你是假中国人。

是 我是中国人
https://s1.ax1x.com/2020/08/15/dFnPSO.png
但是我问了很多人 都说vpn是违法的

Tim-Fang wrote:

gavinye2018 wrote:

Tim-Fang 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

hi i'm chinese
In China, vpn is illegal

It's not, stop spreading Rumors然后如果你是中国人你应该能看得懂这个：
-VPN目前为止不违法，不过中国人应该都知道，所以我猜你是假中国人。

是 我是中国人
https://s1.ax1x.com/2020/08/15/dFnPSO.png
但是我问了很多人 都说vpn是违法的

这就是传播谣言的后果，你是否听说过 《三人成虎》？