The filter, also known as the filterbot, bad word detector,[1] or censor, filters certain words or phrases and alerts the user that what they wrote is against Community Guidelines. As a rigid rule, profanity is a violation of the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines. As such, all parts of the Scratch Website utilize some type of filter. Additionally, posting references to inappropriate topics or links to unmoderated chat sites are also often filtered. In addition, some words trigger a "soft report" where the Scratch Team is notified but the comment is not blocked.[2]
Scratch Website
- Main article: Mute
On the Scratch Website, if a blacklisted string is encountered in a comment, it is automatically disallowed from being posted onto the website, the user who posts the comment is automatically temporarily muted, and the Scratch Team is notified. Scratchers used a stickied forum topic to report filter bugs, however, Scratchers are now encouraged to use Contact Us to report these.[3] The filter on the Scratch Website is implemented with Cleanspeak.[4] The filter is also stricter for New Scratchers than it is for Scratchers.[5]
-
The message that shows when commenting inappropriate words or phrases -
The message that shows when commenting personal information, or the name or URL of a innappropiate website or chat app -
The second message explaining a user is temporarily muted -
How the mute looks on old style pages
Notable Filtered Topics
|
This page or section needs additional citations for verification. Its information may be inaccurate. Editors can help by adding references. (June 2023) |
In addition to inappropriate words or phrases, the filter also filters out a number of other things that are not necessarily inappropriate but nevertheless unsuitable for Scratch. Notably:
- The word "discord" is filtered regardless of context[6] (one can get muted for commenting that contains that word) since it is the name of a service that allows private or unmoderated chatting.[7]
- The filter also incorrectly filters out some words in non-English languages because they may have an inappropriate meaning in English.
- The filter originally also blocked words that were themselves appropriate but contained inappropriate words in them, but this has been fixed by adding a whitelist.[8]
- To avoid people swearing without actually typing out the word, the filter also blocks strings of characters including %, #, and @ that are commonly used to replace swearing and cursing.
Forums
On the Scratch Discussion Forums, if a user attempts to post something that goes against the filter rules, it will fail to post, but the user will not be muted.[9]
In addition, there is a list of words that are replaced with an asterisk. Prior to November 2023, this was the only system for filtering posts. The asterisk was originally intended to be a stop-gap until the filter used on the rest of the website could be used[10], but it still exists on the forums even after the addition of the new system.
In January 2025, the Scratch Team confirmed the presence of an anti-spambot automated filter on the Scratch forums.[11]
Account Creation Page
If someone tries to create an account that contains vulgar or disallowed terms, "Username not allowed" will be shown to the right of the screen. Entering anything with the word "kaj" will also display "Username not allowed" to prevent impersonation.[12]
Problems
Scratch 1.x Website
On the Scratch 1.x website, until late 2011, phrases like "skyscraper", "grape", or "push it" were blocked due to an issue known as the Scunthorpe problem, where a word blacklist encounters a false positive and flags a string not intended to be flagged. Since then, a whitelist was added containing many words and phrases that incorrectly trigger the filter.[8]
Scratch 2.0 Website and later
The filter technology sometimes causes problems in languages other than English. Swear words in those languages (unless spelled exactly the same as in English) are not blocked.[13] Also, blacklisted words in English may have other meanings or be included in words in other languages.[14]
With the spam filter, there have been problems such as the filter stopping users from posting innocent links, such as project and studio links.[15]
Outage on 2022-04-12
- Main article: 2022-04-12 Filter Outage
On April 12th, 2022, the filter stopped working completely because of issues related to the system,[16] which resulted in a large insurgence of trolls registering accounts with inappropriate usernames and submitting inappropriate comments and Discussion Forums posts. As the result, all comments were closed and hidden from the public and the Discussion Forums were put under Maintenance Mode until the filter returned back to normal.
Other Uses
- To reduce commercial spam, the filter has been also known to filter out numbers often used by commercial spammers.
- This part has been stopped due to problems caused.[17]
- Similarly, the filter blocks words and phrases commonly used by spammers, such as "escort" and "customer service".
- The filter has been reportedly filtering out ASCII art.[18]
- On the forums, the filter has sometimes been used for things other than swear words. Prior to a registration list of user-created websites, the domain names of some popular website creating services, such as Weebly, were blocked. Alongside, certain shortened links were blocked because the shortened link may link to inappropriate sites or pages with malware.
- On April Fools' Day, the forum filter has been used for some jokes. In 2011, this was primary, but in 2012-13, the entire website had a joke theme (Neigh and Pico, respectively), and the filtered words were a strengthening of the joke.[citation needed]
- Links to sites primarily for private or unmoderated messaging, including Google Docs and Discord, are blocked.[19]
- To reduce unmoderated chat through livestreams, terms such as "livestream" are disallowed, and YouTube channels/videos containing livestreams and premiers are strictly prohibited, regardless of chat being disabled or not.[20]
- To prevent inappropriate sites, TinyUrl, Bitly, and other related link shorteners are blocked in comments. They are also not allowed in signatures.[21]
- Names of some Scratch-related browser extensions are filtered out, as mentioning them is against the Community Guidelines.[22]
- "https://uploads.scratch.mit.edu/get_image" is blacklisted due to abuse and the fact that it was not intended to be used as an image host.[23]
Controversies
It has been alleged that the Scratch Team had forgotten to filter certain terms, even major vulgar insults. While some minor profanities remain unfiltered, they are still filtered in the forums, which confused many to think that it was not allowed. In addition, using blank tags can also help bypass the filter in the forums.[24] Innocent terms, such as "homophone,"[25] were blocked due to typos, but were later on removed after the Scratch Team had confirmed that these words were accidentally blocked due to typos in the filter list.[26]
References
- ↑ "Hmm...the bad word detector thinks there is a problem with your comment. Please change it and remember to be respectful." (scratch:js/splash.intl.js)
- ↑ post:6494548
- ↑ post:7668203
- ↑ scratch:parents
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2016-02-16). "Keep working towards that full Scratcher status - that helps a lot with the filter." post:1795039
- ↑ Za-Chary. (2021-07-25). "Evidently [Discord] has been causing such a problem on Scratch due to its popularity — with not many Scratchers using it for the original meaning or the MLP character — that we decided to block the word." post:5466750
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2023-03-01). "Unfortunately, the safety aspects of [Discord] (an unmoderated chat site) require that it be in the filter." post:7021565
- ↑ a b Lightnin. (2011-11-03). "I'll add them to the whitelist so they don't set off the filter anymore." ar-post:982989
- ↑ File:Cannot Post To Forums Via Filter.png
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2022-07-26). "It was supposed to just be a temporary thing until the main filter could be integrated into it - but it has never made it to the top of the “to do” list!" post:6486638
- ↑ cheddargirl. (2025-01-16). "Okay, maybe not unsolved, it could have been a necropost spam got posted here earlier, our anti-spambot-bot ate it" post:8341658
- ↑
"msg":"bad username"https://api.scratch.mit.edu/accounts/checkusername/namethatincludeskaj - ↑ lisafireball. (2014-04-22). "I can curse and stuff in a different language." topic:36504
- ↑ Little_sweet_girl. (2014-03-10). "when I am saying about the Vocaloid Song “Fukkireta”, the anime “Kurosh i tsuji” or…" topic:32001
- ↑ cs96871. (2016-01-14). I go to post the link to the studio and what do I get? “Hmm…the bad word detector thinks there is a problem with your text. Please change it and remember to be respectful.” topic:178341
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2022-04-12). "There were some issues with the filtering system but they weren't related to any kind of DOS." post:6206238
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2016-02-22). "I've shut those filters off for now - it should work for you." post:1808094
- ↑ Mecha11_. (2017-04-20). "Text Sans is classed as inappropriate language[title]" topic:250794
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2016-10-07). "Please don't do that as it would be considered unmoderated private chatting." post:2237570
- ↑ lHatr. (2021-03-07). "I don't believe live streams are allowed because one, of the chatting, and two, you can't moderate what could be coming next in the stream." post:4971824
- ↑ post:4719530[dead link]
- ↑ ceebee. (2017-11-30). "We want to announce today that we’re shifting our policy related to browser extensions, userscripts, userstyles, and other similar external software. We’ve decided that, for safety reasons, we are no longer going to allow these to be advertised on Scratch." topic:284272
- ↑ Paddle2See. (2023-11-30). "As I recall, [uploads.scratch.mit.edu] was blocked on the main site because it was being abused in comments and spam attacks...It was never our intent to have assets.scratch.mit.edu be used as a general purpose image host for non-project images." post:7667728
- ↑ topic:495897
- ↑ post:5122097
- ↑ topic:493537
