Updates to Chat Privacy API + New Account Indicators + Changes to Text Filtering APIs

Yeah, I don’t particularly mind it. It just seems like a really odd change, so I’m interested in what brought it on.

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They’re images that I added myself (images of items that you can click and view the stats of it), and you can only post one at a time

About the pet names, we’re trying to cause minimal pain while doing everything possible to keep users protected.

If it becomes a problem it sounds like we might require you to add a cooldown or a CanChatCheck for those too. When reasonable the CanChatCheck is probably the best for users.

Well, I’m sure your users will find a way to mess it up for everyone, but until then I can’t imagine it being an issue. I’d wait for a response from staff though, just to be sure.

Will Roblox make the chat filter more lenient for users above 13 after these updates?

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I have a custom chat GUI just for team chat in my game, in addition to the default chat. It uses chat filter ofc.

Do I need to disable the team chat GUI entirely for a player who can’t chat?

Will these new privacy rules synergize with (the privacy settings applying to) on-site-chatting / personal messages / group walls / comments / forums / etc.?

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@UristMcSparks has written an article about these new CanUser(s)Chat APIs and when they do and do not need to be used. I don’t know when it will be posted, but it answers this question.

But it says that emotes and canned text are fine. Just has to be appropriate for all users like anything else.

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Yes. Users with chat disabled shouldn’t see any chat-like player communications.

And any messages in that feed need to be checked if the source and the target user can chat before they are sent to the target user (considering the “friends only” chat option that will be enabled in the future, which CanUsersChat will handle).

  1. Either way users who can’t chat to each other (CanUsersChat returns false) shouldn’t be seeing those messages anyway. Honestly this change doesn’t really change the answer to your question. You should be using FilterStringForBroadcast for this case though.

  2. Make an alt account and go in to account settings and change the in game chat privacy setting before you join a game with another account.

  3. If it’s not releasing this week, that should be ok.

And I imagine you want us to wrap CanUserChatAsync with a pcall, or will it always run properly?

Question about the new async functions: If they work in a pcall, can the response be loaded at the beginning and cached to prevent repetitive calls?

Honestly in practice they’ll never yield right now, they’ll either throw because of usage that isn’t allowed or return immediately.

We’ll cache internally too, so calling them directly will be the best choice.

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You’ll want to pcall it, yeah.

It won’t fail for any reason except incorrect usage right now, but one of those is if the player left the server, which in some cases could happen before this message is called.

In the future it may need to actually yield and do requests that could fail to correctly check against an offline user, but that’s not supported yet. That will also cache internally too.

I think that’s for Xbox One


Will there be some sort of indicator on players who have their chatting ability disabled?
It’d be really annoying to try talking to someone without knowing that they have their chat disabled and can’t see what you’re saying.

I was thinking something like this:

Excuse the crude mockup... ![image.jpg](upload://8we8CheOOzoJnmFLsEcCZIv2b27.jpg) ![image.jpg](upload://gSGaOUWnMVgF6XAYqLOhZvpgcUC.jpg)
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Yes, please have there be an indicator of someone who cannot chat.

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Lots of good questions here. I’ll be gathering feedback and try to get back to most folks over the coming week.

I also want to note I removed the 24 hour launch window for the API changes and will be looking to update this thread when the updates are ready to go live.

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Not to be the guy that points out useful holes… but will roman numerals be censored out like numbers for people under 13?
image.png

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These are good changes. And for real…if you want pet names for <13, just provide some default pet names to choose from. That applies to all stuff like that. Always provide some developer-created options.

These extra guidelines should just be another challenge added to game development. And if you’re making games, you should like challenges! I’m sure there’s creative ways to design games that utilize these guidelines in great ways.

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I see a little audio icon on the first image. Does that mean voice chat!?

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