As a Roblox player, I am worried about profanity & other swearing on the platform. I just recently encountered a player with a really inappropriate text on the front. I don’t think I can say more than “It was the F-word”.
My story
Yeah, the second I saw it I wondered how moderators could have let this go through without doing anything. I went to the user’s profile. And I saw this:
Pretty innocent, right? Well, as I may say so myself: half the picture, half the truth. You probably don’t understand what I mean (yet), well let me show you another picture, and we’ll see if you soon realize what I’m talking about.
Now, some bells should be ringing. The t-shirt goes on top of the shirt and there it is.
Note, the image below is not particularly offensive but it should be able to tell you how this was done. It does not contain any profanity / swearing. I am still doing it in case you don’t like certain words and/or you prefer not to see them or be reminded of their existence:
My suggestion:
TL;DR: Check avatar for text after changing it.
My solution, although not all perfect, should give a pointer on what to do to deal with this situation.
Basically, whenever users go to their avatar page, and change their clothes, once they are done, the system should check for text and profanity if it found some kind of text.
It should only have to do it on the larger parts of the avatar’s parts (like torso and feet, not the shoulders).
I think this is quite critical if you think about children < 13, like 7-8 year old children are playing a game and suddenly there are users all around them with profanity or other inappropriate wording on other players’ characters.
Just think what would happen if this got out in the news or social media. Most of us probably know about the incident where a girl played Roblox and suddenly inappropriate things happened… yeah you get the point. Just google if you’re curious.
I am also aware this could be resource-intensive, but I know there are people at Roblox who are intelligent enough to figure something out.