Xbox Announces New Message-Filtering Features

The good folks over at Xbox are seemingly set to seriously crack down on swearing at other folks on Xbox Live. Via text chat, anyway. The company today announced a new set of message-filtering features that should allow players to better determine exactly what kind of content they want to receive from others. Soon, the days where other folks message you immediately after a match to yell obscenities in your inbox might be well and truly over.

In short, Xbox will introduce four levels of text filtration: Friendly, Medium, Mature, and Unfiltered. The first is meant to basically filter out anything potentially offensive with the last being basically how things are right now. These appear to be configurable settings, and will also allow players to specifically indicate that, for example, vulgar messages from friends are fine, but vulgar messages from random folks are not.

"Communication is a core part of Xbox and gaming in general, whether it's telling someone 'GG' or planning your next move with your squad. With such a large community of players with varying backgrounds from around the world, this diversity means that everyone has different levels of what language they are comfortable with while gaming," Dave McCarthy, Corporate Vice President, Xbox Operations shared as part of the Xbox Wire post announcing the new features. "While the vast majority of communications are innocuous, some can make people uncomfortable – not all people interpret things in the same way, and even the same person can have different thresholds for what content is acceptable in different scenarios."

The new automated text filters are set to start coming out "soon" and Xbox says it will begin with private messages before expanding to other aspects of the Xbox ecosystem, including but not limited to profiles, activity feeds, and more. The feature debuts for Xbox Insiders today before releasing this fall for everyone else.

What do you think about the new text filters? Is there anything more Microsoft and Xbox could do to curb toxicity on the platform? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

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