I too have concerns over the current method of how Roblox handles voice chat moderation. I cannot attest to all methods of how it is handled, but I can attest the primary first line of defense is 100% through newer “artificial intelligence” methods specifically trained and designed to pick up various ques Roblox deems is in violation of their Community Guidelines.
I got my first VC ban yesterday talking about a particular alcoholic drink on a 17+ experience which artificial neurons would easily interpret me as “name calling with explicits” to someone, but it was a mere discussion about weirdly named drinks. The ban was near immediate, no more than 5 seconds, and unless several people have a macro for quickly reporting I do not believe I was user reported.
I understand the shear amount of total “active” (active being registered individuals who continuously log into Roblox at least once a week and engage for at least 1 hour) users of the platform would overwhelm even the largest most well funded moderation team the world would have to offer, but the fact is we don’t even have that. I’ve been a member of Roblox for 15+ years, I’ve seen it grow, and I know for a fact attempting to properly tackle moderation on this scale is nearly impossible even if you outsourced the entire team to China/India.
Possible Solution
Personally, I am okay with and understanding with continously trained artificial neurons being the first line of defense for moderation, as long as Roblox would:
Actively acknowledge it is being used and they are aware it is not perfect.
Would hire a well trained and funded team who is capable of spending more than 5 seconds quick-reading through cases and actually take a moment to interpret the situation + apply company policies.
Establish some sort of “account standing” credits/ranking where those who are in good standing and haven’t had serious run-ins with the moderation team have better ways to escalate their cases to this team to assist with training this first-line artificial intelligence.
There are ways to tackle this that are better than what is currently offered. The very first at absolute minimal step is transparency this is being handled by AI. Roblox as a corporation may not admit it, but I can attest it is being used based off hints from previous Press Releases and Job Postings.
EDIT:
Just got a day ban for harassment. I have no clue what they’re even talking about
So discovered something interesting today. Got suspended yet again with no “it could have been this” reason whatsoever. Upon looking into the voice API, Roblox does appear to have some sort of reason listed, but in numerical form:
So for anyone who comes across this thread with a ban, I implore you to take a screenshot/note what banReason number you get along with what you suspect the ban is. I am curious if we can find some patterns along with the banReason number to determine why we’re getting banned.
At some point, whether I find enough information or gather enough feedback, I’ll create a separate thread pooling all of this information together to keep it more concise.
Voice Chat really does seem, to me, to be a strange perplexing feature for the ROBLOX environment.
Even though people have wanted something like Voice Chat, but because of Roblox’s Moderation practices there’s an incentive to stay away from it rather than use it.
People, out of habit, just say stuff off-the-cuff, entirely different from actually typing something out. Because of Roblox’s moderation you have to super vigilant of whatever unconscious utterances you make.
I think they are trying to improve the moderation, however. Today I got my first VC suspension (reason 6) even though I was not saying anything that would break guidelines (in context to the game I was in).
About 5 minutes into the suspension, however, it managed to get lifted. I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems they are making strides to fix VC moderation, or I was just a lucky case.
Auto-moderation for assets is dumb/annoying, I was on a business account scrolling through toolbox models and i put in a model that had inappropriate models inside and it instantly got the whole account perm banned. It was a 10 year old account and everytime I emailed Roblox they said we cant do anything which is unfortunate.
(I know this isn’t the place to discuss this but that message peaked my interest in asset auto moderation)
Also I would like to add to this that yes, moderation does need to have reasons for bans and the exact quote on some of them on what may have been perceived else players may just say it again without knowing what exactly they said was wrong.
i was doing games for the hunt and then i got banned while being afk. my mic was muted both irl and in roblox, yet i got banned. i really hope they can rework bans for voice chat because i have gotten banned for stupid reasons several times within these past few months
for a follow up, my account was appealed. i have no clue why i got banned in the first place but at least it was appealed 20 hours later
I got banned for an unfair reason (harassment) after reporting a user for being underage, tried to appeal, and got this incredibly long and stupid captcha, at this point, there’s an admin targeting me or something because in no way did I deserve the ban here.
EDIT: after solving it I got “ERROR, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, PLEASE TRY AGAIN” and a harder captcha TWICE
got one wrong and had to redo all of them with the number increased
edit 2: I CANT APPEAL IT AT ALL I KEEP GETTING THE ERROR
I ended up manually emailing Roblox and telling them that I essentially got an unappealable ban for something that I did not do, but I didn’t even get a response.
This is insane. My microphone was muted in-game (or at least it said it was muted) and I was talking over Discord. I cussed IN A DISCORD CALL while team-testing and got warned. Am I going to have to start blocking Roblox and Roblox Studio’s access to my mic out of fear that it’ll pick up something I’m saying in a completely different context?
I actually had my VC Suspended only once. Because I didn’t want for any offenses to pile up on me I appealled it. I have no clue what I have done to get Suspended as I don’t swear or use strong language to others. Seeing this was may of last year, it is surprising to see that this feature has not been included yet.
I got the same suspension for 1 day and i just talked with my friends and nothing inappropriate, but some mad players reported me and i got the suspension, it’s terrible system
I recently got my Roblox account banned for 1 day while interacting with other users in-game. While people may say it sounds like a problem that you were responsible for, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the case at all… I was simply interacting family-friendly and got kicked out of the blue after reporting a player who was indeed breaking the Roblox Community Standards. Now, I am facing Roblox Customer Support to sort this problem up. They didn’t give me anything other than stating that I was being a bad influence and saying discriminatory things.
