By Dave McCarthy, Corporate Vice President, Xbox Operations
At Xbox, we are investing in building a positive gaming community. We believe that gaming should be
inclusive and welcoming for everyone, which means creating experiences and
communities that invite everyone to play safely and responsibly.
Since we launched Xbox Live nearly two decades ago, we’ve been
constantly learning and investing in new tools to make Xbox a welcoming and
inclusive space to game. This includes creating Community
Standards for Xbox, which complements our Code of Conduct and
provides gamers the ability to report inappropriate behaviour or content, being
more transparent when enforcement has taken place so people who have been
reported for inappropriate conduct have the chance to learn what behaviour is
acceptable or not, ongoing improvements to family settings, and working closely
with Xbox Ambassadors to encourage and promote positivity from within the
community. It’s our responsibility to ensure gamers of all walks of life feel
welcome on our platforms, and we’re proud to lead the industry with our
customisable family settings on Xbox.
Now, we’re taking the next step in this responsible gaming journey by rolling
out player-centric text filters on console.
Putting Players in Control
Communication is a core part of Xbox and gaming in general,
whether it’s telling someone “GG” or planning your next move with your squad.
With such a large community of players with varying backgrounds from around the
world, this diversity means that everyone has different levels of what language
they are comfortable with while gaming. While the vast majority of
communications are innocuous, some can make people uncomfortable – not all
people interpret things in the same way, and even the same person can have
different thresholds for what content is acceptable in different scenarios.
We want to give you, the gamer, the control over what messages
you want to see when you are engaged in the Xbox community, so we’re enabling
new ways to filter content, specifically text. These new automated text
filtration capabilities will start rolling out across the Xbox ecosystem soon,
starting first with private messages and expanding over time to profiles, LFG,
Clubs and your Activity Feed.
With this update, you will set your own specific levels of
automated filtration so you can decide what’s acceptable and what isn’t in the
text-based messages you receive across Xbox Live. Filter levels can be
customised based on four tiers of filtration – Friendly, Medium, Mature and
Unfiltered. And as always, if you receive a message that violates our
Community Standards for Xbox, even with filters in place, you can still report
this conduct to Xbox Enforcement for follow up.
Settings pages showcasing how you can customise your filtration
level for different types of communications across Xbox Live. Filter levels
include Friendly, Medium, Mature and Unfiltered.
Settings pages
showcasing how you can customise your filtration level for different types of
communications across Xbox Live. Filter levels include Friendly, Medium, Mature
and Unfiltered.
Filters with
Added Flexibility
With content filtration, it’s essential that every player has
the ability to choose their own filtration level, and that the settings work
for gamers of all ages. For example, we recognise that while some adults use
profanity without any ill intent while gaming, parents with small children
likely won’t find this same experience acceptable. Similarly, there are
differences between the everyday speech you’d use with your friends and harmful
insults that could negatively impact anyone. With this in mind, we’ve ensured
our safety settings are configurable along a spectrum from most filtered to
least filtered so you can choose what is best for you.
There is also an important distinction between conversations
with friends versus people you don’t know, so we’ve added functionality
allowing you to turn the filters completely off for messages from your friends
while leaving the filters on for Message Requests so that you don’t receive
unwelcome content from people you don’t know.
How It Works
Example of a
filtered message on Xbox Live while using the Friendly filter. This filter
hides most things that could be offensive, while allowing for some words or
phrases commonly used to refer to game play.
On your console, you can configure your message safety by going
to Settings > General > Online safety & family > Message safety.
Whenever you receive a message that’s beyond your safety setting, it’ll be
replaced with a [Potentially offensive message hidden] placeholder. You can
click on that placeholder to learn more about the settings, and there’s a handy
shortcut to go change those settings. Adult accounts will have the ability to
choose whether to see what content has been filtered based on the filter they
choose.
If you’re a parent, you can manage the settings for your child’s
account as well. By default, child accounts will be set to the highest
level of filtering, Friendly, but you’re in total control of what’s right for
your family and can change this setting as appropriate. The ability to view
filtered content will be off by default for all Child and Teens accounts.
We also know that keeping in touch with your gaming friends is
important whether you’re on the console or on the go. With that in mind, we’ve
made sure these settings work across Xbox One, Xbox Game Bar, the new Xbox App
on Windows 10, and the Xbox Mobile app.
Example of filtered messages on the Xbox mobile app with the
Medium filter level set. This filter level allows for some vulgar words while
still limiting harsher vulgarities and phrases identified as bullying.
Example of
filtered messages on the Xbox mobile app with the Medium filter level set. This
filter level allows for some vulgar words while still limiting harsher
vulgarities and phrases identified as bullying.
Creating content filters that work for all types of gamers is a
journey and our work doesn’t stop here. We will continue to improve, evolve and
expand our work based on your feedback. And even with filters in place, it’s
still important that players adhere to our Community Standard for Xbox as well
as report any conduct that violates this to Xbox Enforcement. To learn
more about our approach to the different filters and what kinds of content
they’ll filter out, you can visit https://xbox.com/MessagingSafety.
Looking Ahead
Text filters are designed to be additive to the existing work
we’ve done to ensure everyone has a safe and enjoyable experience on Xbox.
Ultimately our vision is to supplement our existing efforts and leverage our
company efforts in AI and machine learning technology to provide filtration
across all types of content on Xbox Live, delivering control to each and every
individual player. Your feedback is more important than ever as we continue to
evolve this experience and make Xbox a safe, welcome and inclusive place to
game.
Text filters will first debut to our Xbox Insiders today; our
plan is for them to roll out to everyone later this fall, so stay tuned for
more updates.
