While gaming is a medium and industry that is evolving at a quick pace, it’s still largely one that’s toxic to a large degree online. If anything, it’s gotten far worse over the last 4-5 years as more and more hatred, rage, racism and sexism have bubbled up. Whether or not anything can be done about that at this point without some major changes remains to be seen, but Microsoft is going to give a try with new text filters they have rolled out.
The filters are detailed fairly extensively in the video below by Major Nelson. The filters basically breakdown into these categories: Friendly, Medium, Mature and Unfiltered. Each one has a variety of filtering to messages with harsh language, racial slurs, and tones that imply bullying with Friendly being the most filter heavy setting and Unfiltered being the wild west. You still also have the ability to report messages along with these new settings.
How well the system will work is anyone’s guess. And there’s a lot of hateful, nasty people out there that will find some way around the system. At least they are trying something, I suppose, which is better than most.
