Hello fellow Scratchers,

I recently discovered that my exposure project has been removed. While I understand why it was taken down, I believe the situation highlights an important issue that isn’t discussed enough, Scratch’s moderation system. My project aimed to bring attention to inappropriate comments left on other users’ projects, comments that remained visible for weeks without action. I created the project to raise awareness and ensure these harmful behaviors stop. After waiting for moderation to handle it (with no results), I submitted a detailed report. Unfortunately, it’s now been over two months with no response or resolution. I believe Scratch should be a safe, supportive space for everyone, but that requires an effective, reliable moderation system, not just all ai bots doing the work. If inappropriate behavior goes unchecked, it discourages creators and undermines the positive community Scratch is known for. I’m not here to attack the platform or the moderators, I appreciate the work that goes into keeping Scratch running, but I do think we, as a community, deserve a conversation about how moderation can improve to better protect and support users.

Ai bots do not moderate Scratch. If you report inappropriate content then it will not go unckecked.
Exposé-type projects (edit: to make it more clear, by this I mean ones that publicly report other users) are not allowed as they often lead people to inappropriate content and can cause unneccesary drama.
If you have any more issues with inappropriate content or issues with moderation I would suggest you use contact us to directly tell the Scratch Team about it.

8xa wrote:

Ai bots do not moderate Scratch. If you report inappropriate content then it will not go unckecked.
Exposé-type projects are not allowed as they often lead people to inappropriate content and can cause unneccesary drama.
If you have any more issues with inappropriate content or issues with moderation I would suggest you use contact us to directly tell the Scratch Team about it.

why do people NOT know this by now

SMG5SC wrote:

8xa wrote:

Ai bots do not moderate Scratch. If you report inappropriate content then it will not go unckecked.
Exposé-type projects are not allowed as they often lead people to inappropriate content and can cause unneccesary drama.
If you have any more issues with inappropriate content or issues with moderation I would suggest you use contact us to directly tell the Scratch Team about it.

why do people NOT know this by now

A lot of people don't use the forums, and kids are kids and tend to blame their wrongdoings on others. Even if they break the rules, they tend to think that it's not their fault.

AI moderation does not exist on Scratch. Real Humans review the reported stuff,

This is already implemented, it's called the Contact Us Button.

Im just not going to do the essay and just going to add some of Zydrolics comments for false reporting is a false problem here i feel like nobody is actually reading the essay

Zydrolic wrote:

-snip-

The current amount of moderators according to the Our Team page is 31. I would also like to note that going by Art. 20 DSA or AS CULT's content regulations, unsupervised yet completely automated moderation is illegal: https://rm.coe.int/as-cult-regulating-content-moderation-on-social-media-to-safeguard-fre/1680b2b162

Zydrolic wrote:

-snip-

you can also point out that if it were automated, then the amount of server strain on this site would be bonkers

-snip-

asdfland29 wrote:

Hello fellow Scratchers,

I recently discovered that my exposure project has been removed. While I understand why it was taken down, I believe the situation highlights an important issue that isn’t discussed enough, Scratch’s moderation system. My project aimed to bring attention to inappropriate comments left on other users’ projects, comments that remained visible for weeks without action. I created the project to raise awareness and ensure these harmful behaviors stop. After waiting for moderation to handle it (with no results), I submitted a detailed report. Unfortunately, it’s now been over two months with no response or resolution. I believe Scratch should be a safe, supportive space for everyone, but that requires an effective, reliable moderation system, not just all ai bots doing the work. If inappropriate behavior goes unchecked, it discourages creators and undermines the positive community Scratch is known for. I’m not here to attack the platform or the moderators, I appreciate the work that goes into keeping Scratch running, but I do think we, as a community, deserve a conversation about how moderation can improve to better protect and support users.

You literally just broke the Scratch rules! See help keep the site friendly on the community guidelines

8xa wrote:

Ai bots do not moderate Scratch. If you report inappropriate content then it will not go unckecked.
Exposé-type projects are not allowed as they often lead people to inappropriate content and can cause unneccesary drama.
If you have any more issues with inappropriate content or issues with moderation I would suggest you use contact us to directly tell the Scratch Team about it.

I would like to also add that by AS CULT's Content Regulations &/or Article 20 of DSA (I have yet to read the DSA however, so I've no ground besides this ), unsupervised automated moderation systems are a no-go. Human review must be at hand at such things.

That said, conversations about the moderation are allowed - What is not, would be publicly calling out a user during it for instance, getting users to spam on some day, showing inappropriate content, similar of the sort.

asdfland29 wrote:

My project aimed to bring attention to inappropriate comments left on other users’ projects, comments that remained visible for weeks without action.

I would like to point out that we are on a site ran by a nonprofit organization that has about 31 employees - Keyword, nonprofit; they cannot go 50/50 hiring for a day or two if they get a lot of job applications, as otherwise the pay for employees would require to be docked (decreased) and would probably not be a fun time for many of them seeing their promised pay suddenly dropping - with a size that can be guessed as not a number that the founders had expected to achieve any point going forward with it.

After waiting for moderation to handle it (with no results), I submitted a detailed report. Unfortunately, it’s now been over two months with no response or resolution. I believe Scratch should be a safe, supportive space for everyone, but that requires an effective, reliable moderation system, not just all ai bots doing the work. If inappropriate behavior goes unchecked, it discourages creators and undermines the positive community Scratch is known for. I’m not here to attack the platform or the moderators, I appreciate the work that goes into keeping Scratch running, but I do think we, as a community, deserve a conversation about how moderation can improve to better protect and support users.

Again, 31 employees are not going to be able to catch wind of a flooding report queue - While there are reputation metrics, 3.0 pages not actually sending your report the 2nd time you do it on the same content, their employees running marathons to catch up with the report queue while their engineers (at minimum during 2022) have to do the same does not equal to perfect moderation, and this is like this with basically any site. Not all things can get reviewed in a day or months with a site of this scale and your employees being uncomparably low in contrast.

edit: ninja'd by my own quotes LOL

since no one seems to have linked it yet, I will go ahead and bring this out. https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/User:Jvvg/Essays/Misconceptions_about_false_reporting

If you dont have time to read it i will summarize the important part. In essence,
if project is reported report gets added to queue
moderator reviews report and takes action against project if neccasary. If report was blatantly false reporter gets notified.
if a project receives a large number of reports it gets taken down automatically
creator gets banned for 90 minutes (I just want to emphasize this is the only ban that an automated system can give)
project is reviewed and put back up if it is not bad.

many people lie and blame “false reporting” and the “AI moderation” when their project was legitimately taken down. Youtubers do this too, they want a quick buck from views and likes so they post something that the public generally believes.