NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Just NO.
1
This featured has never even been used as a bad thing, it's way too hard to actually find someones project that they really want private that bad, and it's actually very hard to even find a project that has something in it besides Scratch Cat.
Therefore, there isn't actually a privacy risk.
2
This feature was EXTREMELY handy, and now, NOW my favorite icon maker in the whole world will NEVER be able to be played again. It's so big that you can't remix it, and you can't download it and upload it because it's too big. The only way to access it now is through turbowarp, because for some reason the inactive user's account just disappeared one day with no notice, and the projects also disappeared.
It's impossible to play projects like these anymore.
The OTHER problem is that sometimes people actually USE this, have you ever thought of that?!
I link unshared projects literally ALL THE TIME!! I use it to give links that are too long to fit into Scratch (such as Beepbox links or Chrome Music Lab links) and I also use these projects to give savecodes that won't fit into comments- like Appel Levels and Replays, and Mario Maker Levels, and many many many more!!! What if you actually had a profile with only solid projects, you wouldn't want some empty project with a list in it floating around.
The OTHER thing, is that people actually use this to make easter eggs and stuff like that! I once had a puzzle where you had to go into the unshared featured project (which by the way don't remove that because there's literally NOTHING wrong with that and it's VERY handy as well) with turbowarp to get to the next part, and I also, though I hate to spoil it, have a major easter egg where you NEED to go into an unshared project because, well, if the project was shared people would know about the easter egg!!!
And the OTHER THING, is that I used this feature to link to the previous version of my icon maker rather than just sharing it and having it kinda sitting there randomly. And I also used it several times to link projects that I didn't want to share because they weren't big enough and were just plain (ihdk how to describe it rn but idrc atm) and didn't have any actual content, like the savecode converter for my icon maker.
And also think about the people who did this in the past, and are now inactive. It will now be IMPOSSIBLE to access the projects that they linked!
3
For ONCE, actually ACCEPT constructive criticism from your OWN COMMUNITY and the people who actually user your website! I wouldn't be so angry if I knew that you'd actually do that- but any other update that people had a problem with, nope, nothing. You didn't even explain why you weren't doing something!
At most you gave a slight hint towards one minor issue and ignored everything else.
Honestly, that's the one thing lacked is some.. what's the word for it… acknowledgement, acknowledgement towards the community's wants for Scratch.
And to actually listen to what they're trying to say rather than just assuming you know what they want and reading right past it, please.
Like, actually please.
I'd be shocked if you did that.
4
After all this, the only good update I've ever lived through here is the one where you added the “hide” option when you right-clicked on variables, I've used that many times, so that's a good one. But everything else, it would be fine, if you'd just actually listen to us. For once.
5
If anybody has any other examples as to how they've used this feature, post them here.
And you can also note collabs in this topic.

amen to that

cat_tap wrote:

3
For ONCE, actually ACCEPT constructive criticism from your OWN COMMUNITY and the people who actually user your website! I wouldn't be so angry if I knew that you'd actually do that- but any other update that people had a problem with, nope, nothing. You didn't even explain why you weren't doing something!
At most you gave a slight hint towards one minor issue and ignored everything else.
Honestly, that's the one thing lacked is some.. what's the word for it… acknowledgement, acknowledgement towards the community's wants for Scratch.
And to actually listen to what they're trying to say rather than just assuming you know what they want and reading right past it, please.

Objection!
Scratch added a feature of changing Studio Hosts a while ago, which was suggested by… you know, the community!
There were also other updates that were suggested, like in 2.0, Scrarch added clones.

cat_tap wrote:

1
This featured has never even been used as a bad thing, it's way too hard to actually find someones project that they really want private that bad, and it's actually very hard to even find a project that has something in it besides Scratch Cat.
Therefore, there isn't actually a privacy risk.

You could send an inappropriate TurboWarp link in Scratch.

I like how you pretend that the people complaining that their projects are getting leaked via Turbowarp don't exist.
Also duplicate

Me with loads of un-shared projects of private info, passwords, secret stuff says no support.

sudo sh -c 'echo "text" > file'

echo 'text' | sudo tee file 1> /dev/null

TheSmartGuy1234 wrote:

Me with loads of un-shared projects of private info, passwords, secret stuff says no support.

WHY would you put that on Scratch?!
Literally just right-click somewhere and press “New” then “Text Document”
Do you WANT to have stuff leak?

cat_tap wrote:

This featured has never even been used as a bad thing, […] Therefore, there isn't actually a privacy risk.

How are you so sure? I rarely come across inappropriate content on the website these days myself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist — it just means I'm not looking in the right places. If the Scratch Team is considering fixing this for the sake of safety, that probably means they have seen too many instances of privacy risks using this unintended feature.

cat_tap wrote:

The only way to access it now is through turbowarp, because for some reason the inactive user's account just disappeared one day with no notice, and the projects also disappeared.

Recall that there is a feature that you can delete your account along with all your projects. If someone wanted to inexplicably delete their account with all their projects, that means they probably don't want their projects to be seen. It might be nice to respect the creator's wishes.

cat_tap wrote:

I use it to give links that are too long to fit into Scratch (such as Beepbox links or Chrome Music Lab links) and I also use these projects to give savecodes that won't fit into comments- like Appel Levels and Replays, and Mario Maker Levels, and many many many more!!!

Provided that these links and save codes are appropriate, can't you just put them into a shared project on the Scratch website?

cat_tap wrote:

because, well, if the project was shared people would know about the easter egg!!!

I mean, that's mainly the player's fault for spoiling it for themselves.

cat_tap wrote:

For ONCE, actually ACCEPT constructive criticism from your OWN COMMUNITY and the people who actually user your website!

At the same time, I encourage you to think carefully about why the Scratch Team is considering this change — they're not doing it just because they randomly felt like it. They're doing it to keep the community safe.

So I hear complaints about sharing innapropriate content, which I answered in another post.
If you did what the collab topic said, you could turn off the allow access tab yourself on any innapropriate projects, mimicking what it's like to unshare them.
Also, exactly how many privacy risks have you seen, and shouldn't people note that ST can see unshared projects, so Scratch Projects, unshared or not, aren't really private anyway?

Za-Chary wrote:

cat_tap wrote:

The only way to access it now is through turbowarp, because for some reason the inactive user's account just disappeared one day with no notice, and the projects also disappeared.

Recall that there is a feature that you can delete your account along with all your projects. If someone wanted to inexplicably delete their account with all their projects, that means they probably don't want their projects to be seen. It might be nice to respect the creator's wishes.

But, they were innactive, that's why I was confused as to why it just disappeared one day. I just want to figure out how to play my favorite icon maker..

cat_tap wrote:

because, well, if the project was shared people would know about the easter egg!!!

I mean, that's mainly the player's fault for spoiling it for themselves.
Yeah but that's not quite what I mean; the point of an easter egg is for it to be discovered, and since this easter egg is multi-step, the point is to discover it one place and then you unlock the rest, which is supposed to be hidden. If the person even saw the project they'd know about the easter egg, in fact, the project IS the easter egg, and you wouldn't have to find it at all. (None of the steps have anything innapropriate in them, of course, but that's why… well, here-)

I do understand that someone could link something innapropriate- but you could also take down the comment and send an alert to the person who commented. (or if it's in a project take down the project etc.) Or, if you really can't do that, then like I said above, if you implemented the access feature it would solve most of the problems people have, and also solve the privacy AND the usefulness problem.

At that, thankyou for actually responding, I wasn't quite expecting that.

cat_tap wrote:

Also, exactly how many privacy risks have you seen, and shouldn't people note that ST can see unshared projects, so Scratch Projects, unshared or not, aren't really private anyway?

As a former Scratch Team member, I can confidently say that I have seen many instances in which Scratchers would try to share personal information sneakily — and that is all through shared projects and comments. Unshared projects would just make it much easier to try these things and get away with it.

Although the Scratch Team can see unshared projects, the difference is that the community cannot (or, at least, it is not intended for them to be able to). The Scratch Team relies on community reports in order to take down inappropriate content. If no one sees personal information being shared between two Scratchers, then no one can report it, and so the Scratch Team wouldn't be notified that something bad is happening. With the way things are currently set up, nobody can actually report unshared projects, so the Scratch Team just plain wouldn't be notified of them at all.

cat_tap wrote:

I do understand that someone could link something innapropriate- but you could also take down the comment and send an alert to the person who commented. (or if it's in a project take down the project etc.)

True, but again, that depends on a Scratcher (1) seeing the comment, (2) accessing the project to ensure that it contains personal information, and (3) deciding to use the Report button on it.

cat_tap wrote:

At that, thankyou for actually responding, I wasn't quite expecting that.

I appreciate that your reply seemed to consider my thoughts carefully.

You can discuss the unshared projects thing here: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/602417/

Reporting to be closed.

EDIT: Reopened topic due to a complete misunderstanding on my part.

Honestly I have no idea if we actually plan to do this, but if we do I think it's a change that makes sense, even if it's inconvenient for some. Having ANY project be viewable is a pretty big privacy concern, since most people expect unshared projects to be… not publicly viewable. It also makes it harder for us to censor harmful projects. Beyond that, some of the use cases here, like sharing information through clandestine channels, are ones we actively want to limit because they are a moderation nightmare.

Earlier this year, or last year, I don't remember, a popular scratcher accidentally hit the love button on their project. Now, if unshared projects were private, that wouldn't be an issue, but since they currently aren't, tons of people got to see their project before it was ready and the owner was very disappointed.

Delete this topic right now you’re giving ST ideas

Delete this topic right now you’re giving ST ideas

A, that's rude, and B, they weren't giving the ST the idea, the ST already has this idea.

Please use a higher quality image if possible.

<OUO> :: motion  // this is gary he protects my siggy from evil kumquats 

(( ( •) ) _ (( •))    :: #000000   // this is Michael incase gary cant defeat the kumquats

ScolderCreations wrote:

Earlier this year, or last year, I don't remember, a popular scratcher accidentally hit the love button on their project. Now, if unshared projects were private, that wouldn't be an issue, but since they currently aren't, tons of people got to see their project before it was ready and the owner was very disappointed.

This has a simple solution, download the project, delete everything from the project, then import it again.

historical_supa wrote:

Scratch added a feature of changing Studio Hosts a while ago, which was suggested by… you know, the community!

They added this because they removed the ability for managers to edit studio descriptions, something nobody wanted. Your “clones in 2.0” example makes no sense; Scratch 2.0 is 9 years old. The last time a feature was added to the language itself was 6 or 7 years ago. Besides the moving of the frontend to the new site, the only thing the Scratch Team has done is remove functionality (studio comment limit, manager permissions downgrade, and this).

Za-Chary wrote:

As a former Scratch Team member, I can confidently say that I have seen many instances in which Scratchers would try to share personal information sneakily — and that is all through shared projects and comments. Unshared projects would just make it much easier to try these things and get away with it.

On the other hand, people might have good reasons to share things with a couple of people; for example, a Scratcher with a large following posting a link to one of their unshared projects on their profile, so some people could give feedback but it won't be exposed to their vast following. The “sharing of personal information” argument is invalid. A Scratcher can just as easily share a link to some site that has personal information on it; and it would be moderated in the same way as an unshared project, although this has the downside that the Scratch Team can't delete the content if it's extremely inappropriate. In short, if this were to happen, it would make things difficult for correct use of this bug, and it wouldn't really help things in cases where people used it for nefarious purposes; in fact, it might worsen the problem.

Za-Chary wrote:

Although the Scratch Team can see unshared projects, the difference is that the community cannot (or, at least, it is not intended for them to be able to). The Scratch Team relies on community reports in order to take down inappropriate content. If no one sees personal information being shared between two Scratchers, then no one can report it, and so the Scratch Team wouldn't be notified that something bad is happening. With the way things are currently set up, nobody can actually report unshared projects, so the Scratch Team just plain wouldn't be notified of them at all.

Nothing changes if unshared projects can't be shared; people will just rely on other sites, as I said above.

Za-Chary wrote:

Recall that there is a feature that you can delete your account along with all your projects. If someone wanted to inexplicably delete their account with all their projects, that means they probably don't want their projects to be seen. It might be nice to respect the creator's wishes.

This is valid, but there is a case where an account can be accidentally deleted and the projects need to be recovered. Someone I know had their account accidentally deleted by the Scratch Team somehow, and although the account was eventually reinstated, the projects were gone. Some people managed to recover some of the projects by going through links in their activity then downloading the unshared projects and reuploading them to the site, but if this update were to happen those projects would have been lost forever.

Za-Chary wrote:

Provided that these links and save codes are appropriate, can't you just put them into a shared project on the Scratch website?

I know you like playing devil's advocate for the Scratch Team but this is a dreadful argument. Sometimes one would want to share something with another Scratcher without calling attention to it by sharing a project and alerting their followers, regardless of whether the information is private or not. As an example, imagine Griffpatch wanted to share a 600 character link with someone. His options are:

• Use a link shortener to shorten the link and send it to the person (against the rules of this site)
  
• Share a project with the link and alert 200,000 people about it (yeah, no)
  
• Share a project with a link on an alternative account with a small or nonexistent following
  - this works but isn't a real solution because it's inconvenient and people are not really encouraged to have alternate accounts
  
• Give a link to an unshared project with the link (best solution)
  

The latter choice wouldn't be possible if this were to be implemented.

Harakou wrote:

Honestly I have no idea if we actually plan to do this, but if we do I think it's a change that makes sense, even if it's inconvenient for some.

It's great that the Scratch Team hasn't totally made up their mind on this; I thought all hope was lost on this front.

Harakou wrote:

Having ANY project be viewable is a pretty big privacy concern, since most people expect unshared projects to be… not publicly viewable.

This is true… but if the vast majority of people are happy with the current state of this, shouldn't the Scratch Team just create an official way for people to share links to unshared projects, similarly to Google Docs's link sharing?

Harakou wrote:

It also makes it harder for us to censor harmful projects.

Doesn't the Scratch Team have the ability to delete and edit the content of projects, regardless of its status as shared or not? Either way, if a Scratcher wanted to share something inappropriate, they can just share a link to another site; it has the same moderation problem as sharing links to unshared projects. Similarly to what Za-Chary said, it “depends on a Scratcher (1) seeing the comment, (2) accessing the link to ensure that it contains personal information or inappropriate content, and (3) deciding to use the Report button on it.”

completeness wrote:

This has a simple solution, download the project, delete everything from the project, then import it again.

While that works, people don't always think about that and there are plenty of other reasons to fix the bug that allows people to view unshared projects.

completeness wrote:

They added this because they removed the ability for managers to edit studio descriptions, something nobody wanted. Your “clones in 2.0” example makes no sense; Scratch 2.0 is 9 years old. The last time a feature was added to the language itself was 6 or 7 years ago. Besides the moving of the frontend to the new site, the only thing the Scratch Team has done is remove functionality (studio comment limit, manager permissions downgrade, and this).

That is completely false. Over 10 blocks were added when 3.0 was released, and have had several other updates since then. Also, one of the reasons the manager limit was added was that active studios had their studio descriptions changing every few hours, and at worst, every few minutes, which creates lots of changes for the servers to save.

completeness wrote:

On the other hand, people might have good reasons to share things with a couple of people; for example, a Scratcher with a large following posting a link to one of their unshared projects on their profile, so some people could give feedback but it won't be exposed to their vast following.

If a link to the unshared project is put on a profile, all people who visit the profile can still see it, which would still expose the project to the user's following. The only way the shared project would get more clout would be if the project managed to get on trending, which can be avoided most of the time by sharing the project on an alternate account with less clout.

completeness wrote:

The “sharing of personal information” argument is invalid. A Scratcher can just as easily share a link to some site that has personal information on it; and it would be moderated in the same way as an unshared project, although this has the downside that the Scratch Team can't delete the content if it's extremely inappropriate. In short, if this were to happen, it would make things difficult for correct use of this bug, and it wouldn't really help things in cases where people used it for nefarious purposes; in fact, it might worsen the problem.

If people repeatedly share links to website with personal information on them the scratch team can and will just blacklist the website. They haven't done this with turbowarp because of its intended functionality as a faster scratch project player and editor.

completeness wrote:

Nothing changes if unshared projects can't be shared; people will just rely on other sites, as I said above.

Which the scratch team will blacklist if abused.

completeness wrote:

This is valid, but there is a case where an account can be accidentally deleted and the projects need to be recovered. Someone I know had their account accidentally deleted by the Scratch Team somehow, and although the account was eventually reinstated, the projects were gone. Some people managed to recover some of the projects by going through links in their activity then downloading the unshared projects and reuploading them to the site, but if this update were to happen those projects would have been lost forever.

The default setting is to keep the projects which makes it difficult to unintentionally delete your projects. Also, most of the time an account is deleted the owner wishes to leave scratch, which makes it difficult to know whether the projects were deleted intentionally or not.

completeness wrote:

As an example, imagine Griffpatch wanted to share a 600 character link with someone.

Most of the time a link is shared through turbowarp it wouldn't be allowed on scratch. Links with over 500 characters are extremely rare and could easily just be split into 2 different comments if it was allowed on scratch.

completeness wrote:

This is true… but if the vast majority of people are happy with the current state of this, shouldn't the Scratch Team just create an official way for people to share links to unshared projects, similarly to Google Docs's link sharing?

That seems quite similar to a rejected suggestion.

completeness wrote:

Doesn't the Scratch Team have the ability to delete and edit the content of projects, regardless of its status as shared or not? Either way, if a Scratcher wanted to share something inappropriate, they can just share a link to another site; it has the same moderation problem as sharing links to unshared projects. Similarly to what Za-Chary said, it “depends on a Scratcher (1) seeing the comment, (2) accessing the link to ensure that it contains personal information or inappropriate content, and (3) deciding to use the Report button on it.”

Reporting comments doesn't have a text field where you can explain to the moderator where the inappropriate content is which would make it harder for the scratch team to find the inappropriate content. Also, the conversation with the link could be large to where only the people (which would be ok with the rule breaking content) in the conversation would be aware of the link and/or be in an extremely obscure place where another person who would report the content would most likely never find.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

They added this because they removed the ability for managers to edit studio descriptions, something nobody wanted. Your “clones in 2.0” example makes no sense; Scratch 2.0 is 9 years old. The last time a feature was added to the language itself was 6 or 7 years ago. Besides the moving of the frontend to the new site, the only thing the Scratch Team has done is remove functionality (studio comment limit, manager permissions downgrade, and this).

Over 10 blocks were added when 3.0 was released, and have had several other updates since then.

Do you have any examples of “updates” the blocks received?

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

On the other hand, people might have good reasons to share things with a couple of people; for example, a Scratcher with a large following posting a link to one of their unshared projects on their profile, so some people could give feedback but it won't be exposed to their vast following.

If a link to the unshared project is put on a profile, all people who visit the profile can still see it, which would still expose the project to the user's following. The only way the shared project would get more clout would be if the project managed to get on trending, which can be avoided most of the time by sharing the project on an alternate account with less clout.

I think you misread my post. My point wasn't that the followers could see it, it's that if you share a project all your followers are alerted about it. See my Griffpatch example. If he shared an unshared project with someone in a comment, maybe a handful of people who read the comment will see the project. On the other hand, if he shared the project onto the website, 200,000 people would be alerted about it, drawing unnecessary attention.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

The “sharing of personal information” argument is invalid. A Scratcher can just as easily share a link to some site that has personal information on it; and it would be moderated in the same way as an unshared project, although this has the downside that the Scratch Team can't delete the content if it's extremely inappropriate. In short, if this were to happen, it would make things difficult for correct use of this bug, and it wouldn't really help things in cases where people used it for nefarious purposes; in fact, it might worsen the problem.

If people repeatedly share links to website with personal information on them the scratch team can and will just blacklist the website. They haven't done this with turbowarp because of its intended functionality as a faster scratch project player and editor.

You can't blacklist every single website with user-generated content, it's just not possible. Blacklisting sites in mass is regardless a draconian solution that would hinder legitimate use.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

This is valid, but there is a case where an account can be accidentally deleted and the projects need to be recovered. Someone I know had their account accidentally deleted by the Scratch Team somehow, and although the account was eventually reinstated, the projects were gone. Some people managed to recover some of the projects by going through links in their activity then downloading the unshared projects and reuploading them to the site, but if this update were to happen those projects would have been lost forever.

The default setting is to keep the projects which makes it difficult to unintentionally delete your projects. Also, most of the time an account is deleted the owner wishes to leave scratch, which makes it difficult to know whether the projects were deleted intentionally or not.

What do you mean by “default setting”? Yes, the projects stay uploaded on the site, but they won't be linked to the user's profile.

Even if the owner wanted to leave Scratch, by uploading their projects onto the site they put it under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, meaning there is no reason why they shouldn't be available to others regardless of the account owner's wishes.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

As an example, imagine Griffpatch wanted to share a 600 character link with someone.

Most of the time a link is shared through turbowarp it wouldn't be allowed on scratch.

Also, long links are not the only problem. Links with many numbers would be censored by the phone number detector.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

This is true… but if the vast majority of people are happy with the current state of this, shouldn't the Scratch Team just create an official way for people to share links to unshared projects, similarly to Google Docs's link sharing?

That seems quite similar to a rejected suggestion.

Which one? Please don't assume that people have read the entirety of TOLORS.

Irish-Tea wrote:

completeness wrote:

Doesn't the Scratch Team have the ability to delete and edit the content of projects, regardless of its status as shared or not? Either way, if a Scratcher wanted to share something inappropriate, they can just share a link to another site; it has the same moderation problem as sharing links to unshared projects. Similarly to what Za-Chary said, it “depends on a Scratcher (1) seeing the comment, (2) accessing the link to ensure that it contains personal information or inappropriate content, and (3) deciding to use the Report button on it.”

Reporting comments doesn't have a text field where you can explain to the moderator where the inappropriate content is which would make it harder for the scratch team to find the inappropriate content. Also, the conversation with the link could be large to where only the people (which would be ok with the rule breaking content) in the conversation would be aware of the link and/or be in an extremely obscure place where another person who would report the content would most likely never find.

It's the same thing with sharing links to other sites, except on other sites you could actively make it harder to find the content. In fact, if you want, you can give a link to a shared project containing well-hidden personal information, with the same underlying problems.

I would be affected by this too as my April Fools' Day of 2022 project archives would be inaccessible by the public since they are unshared and instead accessed through links on a shared project, but the change does make the site safety better (a lot better, actually). No more worrying about people working around a takedown through llk.github.io/scratch-gui or something like that.

I agree yet disagree, i used it to use MY and only my unshared projects in turbo warp since it loaded faster but without it it’s completely fine, so I want it removed since people can possibly barge into unshared projects which were unshared/banned for a reason