Eng:Image Hosting

To be able to post images on the Scratch Forums, one must upload the desired image to a third-party image host that is white-listed by the Scratch Team. If one was to try and link to an image that was not white-list, they would get an error. This is to prevent spam images, risk of viruses from unauthorized sites, and simply to avoid inappropriate content (usually from popular sites such as YouTube, Tumblr, and DeviantArt).

Host List
The current white-listed hosts are as follows:  tinypic.com (discouraged) photobucket.com cubeupload.com (sometimes the server can fail) imageshack.com imageshack.us modshare.futuresight.org scratchr.org (The ScratchR domain is no longer owned by the Scratch Team, and is now a SMS sending service.) wikipedia.org</li> wikimedia.org</li> scratch-dach.info</li> scratch.mit.edu</li> </ul>

Previous Hosts
These are hosts which were formerly on the whitelist: <ul> imgur.com (removed for inappropriate images on the host) </li> any .edu domain (removed because it was used to send requests to Scratch APIs from the user viewing the post e.g. to logout the user or delete their replies) However, images from the Scratch server are still whitelisted.</li> </ul>

Tinypic
TinyPic was subject to debate some by Scratchers over the fact that it uses bad advertising techniques to generate revenue. For example, one user experienced warnings of hidden malware when a malicious ad was shown on TinyPic. The site also showed adverts that lead to downloading potentially unwanted programs. The Scratch Team also took part in the debate and decided it would be the best option to de-emphasize the use of TinyPic. The Scratch Team member, Paddle2See, said that they would be modifying all documents that mention TinyPic as a white-listed image host to warn Scratchers of the bad advertising practices.

Imageshack
Imageshack also came to a debate because of its subscription practices. In this debate, people also wanted Imgur back. The Scratch Team has yet to state their presence on the matter.

It has been also reported that the images can "expire" overtime and be replaced with an advertisement.

Profit
Each image host has its own way of earning profit. Of course, money is necessary to pay the workers, supply the electricity, and maintain the server hardware. Many sites simply have ads, like with Tinypic and Photobucket, whereas some image hosts take a different approach of having paid accounts such as Imageshack. Some of the ads on Tinypic have been known to exploit malicious code on individual's computers since Tinypic does not regulate their third-party provided adverts. There is also the possibility of an image host earning profit by solely donations.