As a Roblox developer, it is impossible to create a plugin that offers safe communication between developers because Studio does not run any filtering when using FilterStringAsync.
For context, I’ve created a plugin that allows users to write messages to each other (think Google Docs style comments), but because Studio has no way to filter text, this means users are able to freely post any message that would normally be censored.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would allow me to continue making releases of my plugin that keep my users safe
I’m bumping this post (since I can’t make a post) as there is no support for this after 2 years.
I have ran into many issues because this support isn’t provided. For example I generate random inputs within my plugin, but there is no support for me to check that it is a good results. I’ve had reports of users recieving inputs that need to be filtered, yet I haven’t found a solution.
Also there is no prevention when I accept User input, and this is important because other users can still see the strings, and not just the developer themsevels, when in a team create session (In my case, but often in other cases too when collecting user inputted text via the Textbox instance, the input is used in the studio session to change the game somehow which is often public info to other developers within the session). And while trying to achieve a safe public plugin, this becomes problematic as I want to ensure my plugin is safe, and doesn’t risk getting reported, as I can’t filter the results, even though the roblox docs and TOS want FilterStringAsync() to be used on all user input / Uncontrollable text results.
And as a developer, I am unaware what to do next to handle these results because of this safety concern and no tools provided to combat this issue.
An Example on fixing this issue, is removing the studio barrier, and while I don’t know why there is one, if its due to safety reasons (Which is why I assume why it exists), I propose a second idea, by making something like plugin:FilterStringAsync(Message, UserId?) which would return a TextFilterResult so It can be used normally (and this way could only be ran by plugin scripts). These are just ideas on how to address at hand, and may not be possible, but there is many other ways not provided above to provide tools to filter a string within a plugin .
I do believe that Roblox deliberately disabled the filter in Studio so devs can’t uncover the API in any way through a Studio session, I guess with an algorithm, for example, to find out what’s filtered and what isn’t. I always that this was pretty weird logic as the dev can just publish to Roblox and run it in a live game, but maybe not because moderation is more present in live games?
And I fully agree the above reply
I don’t actually believe there is specific ToS on filtering text in-studio? I believe the only guidelines regarding text filtering only applies to live games. If someone can prove me wrong, though, please do… It would be very redundant of Studio to require text-filtering between developers.
I myself am not too sure about it. The plugin I was making when I realized this was an issue was A random String generator. The question becomes, if someone reports my plugin for inappropriate content, but my random string is something inappropriate, would it be taken down? Well I did find a fix to this solution, I still would like to prevent this as much as possible, even when handling User Input, as for me I do Display what the User Inputs . The real issue is that there isn’t enough clarification on it.