Scratch's' moderation system...

_Duplicate_

Petition to Improve Scratch Moderation System: We Need Your Support!

Message:
Hi everyone,

I'm reaching out to share an important petition that aims to improve the moderation system on Scratch. Many users, including myself, have experienced issues with false and mass reporting, resulting in unfair bans on projects. We believe that replacing the current automated moderation system with actual moderators will create a fairer and safer environment for all users.

[b]Why This Matters:

Fair Moderation: Actual moderators can better distinguish between genuine violations and false reports, ensuring that projects are banned for legitimate reasons only.

Community Trust: A human moderation team can build trust within the community by providing clear and reasonable explanations for their actions.

Positive Experience: Ensuring fair and accurate moderation will enhance the overall user experience and encourage creativity and collaboration.

What You Can Do:

Sign the Petition: Please consider signing our petition to show your support for this important change.

Share the Petition: Share the petition with your friends, followers, and other Scratch users to help spread the word.

Join the Discussion: Engage in this thread and share your experiences and thoughts on how we can improve the Scratch moderation system.

Thank you for your support! Together, we can make Scratch a better place for everyone.

@KingJacob101 made a petition about this but it was banned, we have freedom of speech, petition, and assembly, @Queen_of_foodies made another petition about this.
@ToastedPotatoGuy had been targeted by mass and false reporters.
@me? i've said i didn't have *purple app texting platform* and got banned
Best regards, @_Duplicate_, and 220+ scratchers!

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Last edited by _Duplicate_ (Yesterday 17:34:38)

ThisIsTemp1

_Duplicate_ wrote:
Fair Moderation: Actual moderators can better distinguish between genuine violations and false reports, ensuring that projects are banned for legitimate reasons only.
Community Trust: A human moderation team can build trust within the community by providing clear and reasonable explanations for their actions.

Moderators are already actual moderators. The mods are not bots

@KingJacob101 made a petition about this but it was banned, we have freedom of speech, petition, and assembly, @Queen_of_foodies made another petition about this.

You don't have the right to freedom of speech on a website. Only the government can't suppress your speech.

@ToastedPotatoGuy had been targeted by mass and false reporters.

He probably was mistaken or lying.

@me? i've said i didn't have *purple app texting platform* and got banned

You are not allowed to say private messaging platforms, like that one at all.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It says, Congress. Scratch is not Congress.

AmpElectrecuted

_Duplicate_ wrote:
We believe that replacing the current automated moderation system with actual moderators will create a fairer and safer environment for all users.

the only bots used in moderation are:
* the auto-takedown bot, which TEMPORARILY removes projects and TEMPORARILY bans the creator until a HUMAN moderator.
* the mute bot, which isn't perfect but exists for SAFETY reasons.

_Duplicate_ wrote:
@ToastedPotatoGuy had been targeted by mass and false reporters.

what was the projects about?

_Duplicate_ wrote:
@me? i've said i didn't have *purple app texting platform* and got banned

that app supports private messaging, so it cannot be mentioned, even if you say you don't have it. this is a kids website, and kids aren't meant to be using private messaging services. also, they weren't perm banned.

i'm sick of all the people thinking the moderators are bots. i will ask paddle2see if i can make a sticky about it.

_Duplicate_ wrote:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

free speech does not apply to scratch

Zydrolic

Nonprofit (AKA, they are unable to earn money in ways other than merchendise and donations) organizations (or companies, or similar for that matter) are not the Congress - That right directly states that Freedom of Speech only applies to criticizing the government and/or Congress. Freedom of Speech does not apply on this site. Even irregardless of that, the Scratch Team has the right (but isn't obligated to) to take down anything they deem inappropriate for the site. You agreed to this when signing up, hence, that right would be anulled irregardless.

That aside, this site does have actual moderators. About 30-40.
The only automated things on this site are:

The comment filter. (Contrary to (somehow) popular belief, it's a blacklist. Not AI. That would be massive slowness on the servers. Detecting context with blacklists would be literal revolutionary technology, not something one can make daily. That aside, saying that social media would never be allowed as people could easily start bypassing it in different ways.)
Autotakedown. This is what people seem to not understand a lot - This, after a short period of many (undisclosed amount) of reports, will take the project down. However, the difference between this and real alerts is that it says “automatically taken down”, and in less than a month, gets re-reviewed. When not, you should be using Contact-Us to ask for a re-review (which you can resend your message to if a month has passed without their response. Please note that they treat this seriously, unlike social medias, which treat it like a revolving door. Do not be rude.)

AI moderation or purely automatic moderation can, as far as I can recall (but need a citation for, so take me with a grain of salt here) actually cause legal issues.

This is a site ran by a non-profit organization, with a lot on their hands, few engineers, and wages to pay. They cannot merely hire employees left and right, they have to consider wages and worktime (unaccounting voluntary extra work). Employees probably wouldn't be happy with having their currently over 500k+ (if i recall right) pay docked.

The “mass reporting” and “false reporting” arguments are often overblown out of their actual proportion. Even then within that event, the person that it'd happened to should be using Contact-Us if it wasn't corrected in a month, not causing a public riot.

Riots and similar do not effect moderator actions. This is the case with most other sites.
(EDIT: 2 of us were slower than another forumer to post this, so we basically explain the same thing. I'd recommend reading all 3 responses though, as you'll have more context than not.)

Last edited by Zydrolic (Yesterday 17:46:55)

_Duplicate_

fine i don't use signatures a lot…

what was the projects about?

@ToastedPotatoGuy ‘s projects were animations about stickmen, they fought a little in the beginning, but there was no gore, okay, and they eventually teamed up, but he doesn’t have ANY projects, he's being targeted, it's cartoonish violence

i'm sick of all the people thinking the moderators are bots.

but the moderators are bots, if you could prove to me that there are more than 220 scratchers who support the moderator bots, i'll ease up.

free speech does not apply to scratch

and i feel like that isn't fair.

move (_Duplicate_) steps

mingo-gag

This quote is flawed,

_Duplicate_ wrote:
Petition to Improve Scratch Moderation System: We Need Your Support!

Message:
Hi everyone,

I'm reaching out to share an important petition that aims to improve the moderation system on Scratch. Many users, including myself, have experienced issues with false and mass reporting, resulting in unfair bans on projects. We believe that replacing the current automated moderation system with actual moderators will create a fairer and safer environment for all users.

Petitions never work on Scratch that's why there is no permanent cat blocks but go on I guess

_Duplicate_ wrote:
Fair Moderation: Actual moderators can better distinguish between genuine violations and false reports, ensuring that projects are banned for legitimate reasons only.

Real Life Scratch moderators do see the reports I don't know where you got that source but ok..

_Duplicate_ wrote:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Free speech does not apply to Scratch, Free speech just means that the government has no right to arrest you for what you said If I remember.

Last edited by mingo-gag (Yesterday 17:52:43)

Zydrolic

_Duplicate_ wrote:
i'm sick of all the people thinking the moderators are bots.
but the moderators are bots, if you could prove to me that there are more than 220 scratchers who support the moderator bots, i'll ease up.

I have been on this site since circa. 2019 and have had no alerts that I did not deserve, and infact haven't even gotten a ban once.

Completely automized moderation is literally against the Law, mind you:

The decisions must be taken under the supervision of appropriately qualified staff, and not solely on the basis of automated means.

See ¶47. This is by The European Council. You can try suing them even, but you'd lose the case and just waste time and resources for both parties unnecessarily.

Completely automated moderation would literally also make the site slower than any other. Like I've stated:

Zydrolic wrote:
Nonprofit (AKA, they are unable to earn money in ways other than merchendise and donations) organizations (…)

The only automated things on this site are:
The comment filter. (Contrary to (somehow) popular belief, it's a blacklist. Not AI. That would be massive slowness on the servers. Detecting context with blacklists would be literal revolutionary technology, not something one can make daily. That aside, saying that social media would never be allowed as people could easily start bypassing it in different ways.)
(…)

This is a site ran by a non-profit organization, with a lot on their hands, few engineers, and wages to pay. They cannot merely hire employees left and right, they have to consider wages and worktime (unaccounting voluntary extra work). Employees probably wouldn't be happy with having their currently over 500k+ (if i recall right) pay docked.

Last edited by Zydrolic (Yesterday 17:58:19)

everwinner64

While I understand the concerns raised here, I want to clarify that Scratch’s moderation system isn’t fully automated. Bots are only involved in temporary actions like removing projects or comments after multiple reports. Everything else is handled by human moderators who review cases individually
There’s also no evidence of mass reporting leading to unfair bans. If a project is permanently removed, it’s because it violated the Community Guidelines, and moderators ensure this process is fair. I think it’s important to avoid misconceptions about how moderation currently works

_Duplicate_

the old petition was signed by 200+ scratchers, i feel like democracy is a subject that should be implemented into scratch

also, i apologize if my topic was wrong, but another misguided person posted about the whole “situation”

ask [there's gotta be something we can do to resolve this, right?] and wait

switch costume to [-@_Duplicate_ v]

AmpElectrecuted

Zydrolic wrote:
I have been on this site since circa. 2019 and have had no alerts that I did not deserve, and infact haven't even gotten a ban once.

Same, even though I have been three-day banned many months ago and consider that a stupid thing on my part now.

Last edited by AmpElectrecuted (Yesterday 18:02:12)

Minecraft5324_92

I can agree with you. However, It's not the ST that is making these reports but the people of scratch themselves. I know this is a bad reason in this topic but that is the best I can do

ThisIsTemp1

_Duplicate_ wrote:
fine i don't use signatures a lot…

what was the projects about?
@ToastedPotatoGuy ‘s projects were animations about stickmen, they fought a little in the beginning, but there was no gore, okay, and they eventually teamed up, but he doesn’t have ANY projects, he's being targeted, it's cartoonish violence

If the cartoonish violence was extreme, it could have been taken down. There may be other reasons, like tag spam, unrelated tags.

i'm sick of all the people thinking the moderators are bots.
but the moderators are bots, if you could prove to me that there are more than 220 scratchers who support the moderator bots, i'll ease up.

Here's proof.

free speech does not apply to scratch

and i feel like that isn't fair.

Then ask your local congressman to change the law. They probably won't do it, but worth a try.

Mozboz

_Duplicate_ wrote:
the old petition was signed by 200+ scratchers, i feel like democracy is a subject that should be implemented into scratch

also, i apologize if my topic was wrong, but another misguided person posted about the whole “situation”
ask [there's gotta be something we can do to resolve this, right?] and wait
switch costume to [-@_Duplicate_ v]

No, it is not a problem that exists, it doesn't need resolved. Auto mods exist in limited quantities. They only occur when a LOT of people report a project, and those people get punished if it didn't matter. A human then reviews the project. And the mod for comments is flawed in some ways, but works incredibly well.

Numbers do not matter on Scratch Suggestions either. It depends on the Scratch Team's decisions.

Last edited by Mozboz (Yesterday 18:05:55)

ThisIsTemp1

_Duplicate_ wrote:
the old petition was signed by 200+ scratchers, i feel like democracy is a subject that should be implemented into scratch

Democracy probably isn't the best idea, because many on this site are too young to be trusted to run a site and make decisions, even representative democracy isn't a good idea because they may elect the famous over the qualified.

Last edited by ThisIsTemp1 (Yesterday 18:06:27)

Zydrolic

_Duplicate_ wrote:
the old petition was signed by 200+ scratchers, i feel like democracy is a subject that should be implemented into scratch

The most democracy this site and all others have is being able to contact the help desk, and telling them what you believe is incorrect.
Once again however, “completely automized moderation” is out of the question unless we are suggesting a non-profit organization is risking a huge lawsuit (see ¶47), which they would not gain anything from (as they cannot sell personal data or similar. All they can do is, again, obtaining money through donations, loans and merchandise).

also, i apologize if my topic was wrong, but another misguided person posted about the whole “situation”

Reminder that channels (they may be spreading commonly spread overblown situations for money) and users are not always telling the truth.

BigNate469

_Duplicate_ wrote:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yeah. Congress can't make laws that deny you the freedom of speech.

The Scratch Team is not Congress, or a part of the United States government. They can make rules forbidding you from saying whatever they want. They actually have the power to take out any moderation action, including a permanent IP ban, for any reason, including because they feel like it. It's a part of the Terms of Use that you agreed to by signing up for an account on this website.

_Duplicate_ wrote:
the old petition was signed by 200+ scratchers, i feel like democracy is a subject that should be implemented into scratch

Scratch is not a democracy (it's actually closer to an oligarchy). The Scratch Team cares less about votes and more about why something is a good idea.

Also, this is implemented already- the entire moderation team are real humans, being paid by the Scratch Foundation.

Last edited by BigNate469 (Yesterday 18:36:33)

_Duplicate_

Also, this is implemented already- the entire moderation team are real humans, being paid by the Scratch Foundation.

ok, it makes sense and all but i thought scratch was a non-profit organization

<[(answer)] = [?]>

scratchcode1_2_3

Just by reading the first few sentences, this is clearly AI. AI doesn't know everything about scratch, but JEEZ those are a lot of completely wrong misconceptions. Literally the 3rd sentence has the biggest misconception ever, which is that Scratch Doesn't have any human moderators.

…
What? cheddargirl, Paddle2See, spectre_specs, cosmosaura, all of them? Are they just gone, vanished into a separate dimension?

_Duplicate_ wrote:
(#5)
@ToastedPotatoGuy ‘s projects were animations about stickmen, they fought a little in the beginning, but there was no gore, okay, and they eventually teamed up, but he doesn’t have ANY projects, he's being targeted, it's cartoonish violence

You can't get “targeted”. You do something wrong, well, you did something wrong, and there's consequences for it.

_Duplicate_ wrote:
(#5)
but the moderators are bots, if you could prove to me that there are more than 220 scratchers who support the moderator bots, i'll ease up.

Okay where did you actually get this from? Regular Scratchers don't “support” the bots. Scratch Team is a paying job, and they are a non profit. But everytime someone gets muted, every project takedown, every report, a human Scratch Team member manually reviews it. You can get a project get taken down with mass reports, but a Scratch Team member will review it, and bring it back if it truly wasn't inappropriate. Scratch Team bans people manually.

Please use Contact Us for individual reasoning for any Scratch Team action. They will gladly explain things to you there, not here.

Last edited by scratchcode1_2_3 (Yesterday 18:46:38)

cake__5

signed! :D

_Duplicate_

wait (are you kidding me?) secs

i'm not a bot, this was just a misunderstanding, and i'm not the only one thinking *thought* that the mods were bots although i've been called an alt before and definitely worse…
(i need to be in forums more often)

set [signature v] to [@_Duplicate_]

Last edited by _Duplicate_ (Yesterday 19:01:12)

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