Improving the Safety of our Community

Updates Announcements
#1

Hello Developers,

To better protect the community against inappropriate behavior, text filtering is now required for all in-game messaging. As many of you know, this has been an informal policy for quite some time. But to appropriately ensure the safety of the Roblox community, we need to formalize this policy and enforce it. We want Roblox to be a safe place where everyone can socialize and play.

Text filtering (previously known as chat filtering) will now be required for ALL text input in-game. For those unfamiliar with it, text filtering scans any user-input text for inappropriate or harmful language. This is not limited to foul language, but all communication that could be considered harmful or personal information. This applies to every instance of user-generated text in your game, not just chat. Pet names, signs, admin messages, or any user-created text stored in datastores are just some examples of user-generated text that must be text filtered. Note: You will most likely not see your own input text filtered locally. This can be very confusing, so I want to mention this system explicitly. However, ANY text input by a user that can be accessed in any other session or is ever viewed by another user will need to be filtered.

We’ve begun flagging games where user input text is not filtered. These games will be suspended until these issues can be fixed. But please note, there will be no permanent moderation action taken on your profile or your game based on this.

We are happy to help you make the modifications needed to comply with this policy change. Please take a look at the video below which discusses how to use text filtering. If you have any specific questions about how to do this in your game, please contact us at devrelations@roblox.com.

We are also actively working to improve our detection algorithms and we understand that some of these flags could be false positives. If you think you’ve been inappropriately flagged, please let us know and we’ll work with you to inspect your game.

We realize this requires work on your part to address – and we are grateful for that. We don’t succeed unless you succeed, but we all need to keep everyone in our community safe. We will be rolling out other policy changes in the future relating to filtering enabled (FE), specifically non-FilteringEnabled games will not be available to players under 13 years old. We will be following up with additional information on FE in a future post. We are actively working to make sure that implementing FilteringEnabled is easier and a clearly understood process.

We are hoping measures like text filtering and any future updates will help us build an increasingly engaging, safe, and fun community for all Robloxians.

– Developer Relations (2Blox2Quit, PenguinMikeDavis, and JParty)

Additional Helpful Links:
http://wiki.roblox.com/index.php?title=Text_Filtering

85 Likes
Just a quick question about ChatFiltering
Do I need to filter this?
Question involving Name Filtering
Parental control: Hide all non-FilteringEnabled games
#2
#3
#4
#5

Hello All,

I am opening this chat up to comments as I think earnest discussion is important. I want to remind everyone that standard rules for public comments still apply, but I also understand that the conversation surrounding this topic is going to be emotionally charged.

This is large policy shift that impacts a large amount of our community. We are doing our best to help every creator out there understand these changes and any future changes.

17 Likes
#6

Thank you for opening this up to discussion. Obviously safety must be a priority, but communication is also important. Once some resources being spent towards community safety are freed up, can we expect to see some improvements towards the filter that prevent such a large number of false-positives?

26 Likes
#7

Are the chat filters for users under 13 going to be adressed? I understand it’s necessary to prevent them from going to any game that might allow them to give out personal info, but currently the filter is censoring words that shouldn’t be censored. They can’t even say the word “I” without it being filtered out, and it makes communication between users nigh on impossible.

24 Likes
#8

I have a few questions regarding the stance on FilteringEnabled:

  • Will the 13+ requirement apply no matter what, or will it only kick in for games gaining traction?
  • Could we potentially have the option to make games 13+ even if we are using Filtering, so that we could potentially have more mature titles?
  • Could we expect more features to help make FilteringEnabled less of a hassle as far as lag compensation goes?
  • Is FilteringEnabled no longer going to be an option in the future?
  • Will more features be released for filtering, so it’ll be easier to migrate for newer developers?

And in regards to the chat filters, will they be more loosened for older users?

28 Likes
#9

@EchoReaper You should expect improvements across all of the required tech being discussed currently. I can assure you the engineering team behind the chat detector is aware of the false-positive problem and is addressing it as one of the primary features that must be improved.

That being said, the quantity of chat and text traffic on Roblox is truly staggering! (I want to put together some analytics to share with all of you about just how many instances of text pass through Roblox systems)

Often false positives are from unique situations that apply only to that one instance/game and not others. This makes fixes incredibly difficult and not as comprehensive as we’d like.

We are continuing a zero tolerance policy on child safety so false positives are preferred over false negatives.

7 Likes
#10

@Digital_Boy I want to release a more comprehensive explanation of how exactly text filtering works on Roblox and why there is so much confusion over what is being filtered and why. I’ll be talking to engineering and CS about this and report back.

6 Likes
#11

I made a suggestion a while back that developers be able to whitelist terms specific to their game for the filter. This was declined because it could be used to whitelist profanity/personal information keywords/etc. Would it be feasible for a feature where developers submit a request for words to be whitelisted for their game, moderators made sure all of those met ROBLOX’s safety standards (much like current review processes for uploaded images/etc), and then those words were whitelisted for that game?

15 Likes
#12
  • Will the 13+ requirement apply no matter what, or will it only kick in for games gaining traction?

The current plan is to require this tech for all games, no matter the popularity. We are designing future policies and systems so they will apply to all experiences on Roblox, as special cases only cause confusion. I’ll talk more about FE further down this post.

  • Could we potentially have the option to make games 13+ even if we are using Filtering, so that we could potentially have more mature titles?

This is an interesting question and is going to require more internal discussion on what will be possible.

  • Could we expect more features to help make FilteringEnabled less of a hassle as far as lag compensation goes?

You should expect major improvements to the FE system in terms of usability, security, and functionality. There is a reason I’m avoiding going too far down the rabbit hole of FE as there are many internal updates coming that will change how this system is utilized by our community. Over the next weeks we will be working diligently to help everyone understand and implement FE, but these improvements need to be implemented before information can be spread. Expect an FE announcement as soon as we have something to announce.

  • Is FilteringEnabled no longer going to be an option in the future?

It will be required for some sorts and discover-ability on particular platforms. More details will be released soon. Roblox as a platform is dedicated to supporting creators of all skill levels and we do not want to discourage newer builders.

  • Will more features be released for filtering, so it’ll be easier to migrate for newer developers?

Yes, yes, and yes. Text filtering and filtering enabled are both undergoing major improvements to allow our community to better utilize these essential tools. I know I’m just repeating myself at this point, but we are working diligently to improve FE and text filters for users of every skill and I will have more to share about these updates soon.

  • And in regards to the chat filters, will they be more loosened for older users?

Our vision is to have a robust and adaptive text filter that works better with older users and adapts to users of all ages. For now though, do not expect a loosening of text/chat restrictions.

15 Likes
#13

I understand you are using some sort of automated scanning mechanisms to check our games for chat filtering and eventually FilteringEnabled. Could you guys perhaps send us, say, a warning message 24 hours in advance of deleting our games, so that we could fix them if there’s a problem we don’t know about?

I’m sure lots of developers would be happy to fix their problems within that 24 hour period and prevent their games from being shut down to the public as a result. This would not provide an opportunity to “stall” as the automated system could simply scan again in 24 hours and delete it if it stills comes up as positive. It would also let us communicate with Roblox before our game is deleted if it is, in fact, a false positive.

I understand that you have a zero-tolerance policy, but I think asking for a notice of violation would be much more appropriate in this case. There are people who have games that might be flagged, people who DevEx for a living and multiple days with no traffic to their game can cost them literally thousands of dollars.

26 Likes
#14

When players are entering some important text, like permanently naming something, or even just putting up a sign that they intend for other players to be able to read, I need to be able to feedback their filtered string back to them so they can confirm the filtered version of their input is okay. It would be worthless for the player to put up a sign that nobody else can read, and the player doesn’t have any way of knowing that they are the only person that can read it.

All the filtering API I can find requires players to be present to filter for, but what if I want to make sure this string is passable for both users <13 and users >13 so that I can guarantee all users will be able to see it? This can be critical for some information, like if a player is naming a world and other players need to use that name as an input in order to travel to this world. What if there are no under 13 users currently in the game? I want a way to get filtered strings for all possible demographics, not just those currently in the game. I need to be able to guarantee that a string will work for everyone.

Let’s extend from the above example where a player names a world, and another player uses that world name as a key to travel to that world. Here’s a hard question: what if that key makes it through the filter when the player first makes it (this key is permanently associated with this world), but later iterations of the filter system now filter the key? Now players may not be able to travel to this world because the key is blocked and I’m not allowed to display the name of the world to anyone because it’s filtered. This player and his or her entire world is screwed. Thoughts on a situation like this?

22 Likes
#15

Will there be any chance of improving network usage in studio when running test servers?
FE requires a lot of replication testing, it can be quite painful when trying to test your game from within studio, most of the time I just open a test server on the site and invite fans to play with me as it’s way faster to load and test - but I don’t think it’s optimum as most of the development testing should be staying within studio itself.

What I’m talking about is when you start a test server, it downloads all the game’s assets, and for each player instance added, it downloads all the assets on that game instance and so on so forth. So you can have up to 8 Test players, and a Test server which causes you to download game assets up to a total of 9 times at once. I used to think studio cached assets between game instances, but it mustn’t as I see all images and meshes etc downloading at their own pace on each game window.

6 Likes
#16

I am having major problems with flagging. This isn’t specific in how I should “let you know”; do I email devrelations@roblox.com, do I discuss in this thread? Is there another place on the dev forum for this?

5 Likes
#17

My biggest concern regarding FilteringEnabled must be active for users under 13 is really just, why?

FilteringEnabled prevents the client from sending orders to the server, this is mostly done for anti-exploit reasons.

What’s the actual reason for this?

3 Likes
#18

We added a Wiki Link to clarify more on Text Filtering!

http://wiki.roblox.com/index.php?title=Text_Filtering

7 Likes
#22

And that’s my problem.

I can hardly script on my own, I manage because my simple methods work. But if FE is required, I’m esssentially being kicked out of the door.

3 Likes
#24

FE isn’t hard – it’s a different paradigm. Someone who’s learning ROBLOX Lua from scratch won’t see much difference in difficulty between learning non-FE programming and FE programming. This is a significant benefit for ROBLOX in the long term, as it will significantly improve our rampant exploiter problem.

ROBLOX is taking efforts to make FE easier to adjust to as @AbstractAlex mentioned. If you have trouble, the correct response is asking for that problem to be made easier to solve rather than asking for games to be made less secure.

6 Likes