Ask HN: Is scratch.mit.edu now primarily social media?

17 points

5 years ago

Over the past few months I've noticed my child spending quite a bit more time on Scratch (including maintaining multiple accounts). I recently reviewed this and was surprised that most of the time was spent in open (and seemingly un-moderated by adults) chats. I was curious if others have noticed this morphing and have the same or other concerns?

Specifically I have two concerns:

1. My child is under 13 and they are certainly sharing private information on this site but none of their accounts required parental consent. I just opened an account with age < 13 in the US and was also not prompted for parental validation. This seems to potentially violate the Child Online Privacy Rule in the US [1].

2. Many schools encourage and facilitate the use of Scratch but at least in my child's case it seems that this has become a loophole to chat and participate in social media during school.

To see what I am referring to you can view https://scratch.mit.edu/explore/studios/all/popular and view any of those studios comments sections which are all primarily an open chat unrelated to the projects.

Scratch in the past has had some really great offerings and community events not only about coding but also about sharing and creating art. I'm disappointed to see that much of the use is not about these at all. Thoughts?

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=4939e77c77a1a1a08c1cbf905fc4b409&node=16%3A1.0.1.3.36&rgn=div5

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