Online safety and its concerns come in various forms, be it through cyberbullying, DDOS attacks, and account theft, just to name a few things. It’s part of the reason why report buttons exist in many, many games and services, to call that stuff out and make higher-ups aware of it. That brings us to earlier this morning when Xbox announced its Community Safety Approach.
In a Transparency Report covering the first half of 2022, Xbox points out that community safety is of the utmost importance, and they’ve committed to releasing a Report similar to the one today, but every six months.
Previously, in their most recent Digital Civility Index, 9 out of 10 responders “identified a need for increased education on how to make the digital world safer – and as we all know, gaming is one of the largest digital environments.” The Xbox Transparency Report is part of their commitment to making the service safe, and it highlighted a few key points of that report.
Of the actions Xbox has taken up to this point, they’ve narrowed it down to the following details.
- Taking action to offer better experiences – As of now, about 4.33 million proactive enforcements were taken against “inauthentic accounts,” which covers 57% of reports in the same period. Xbox says that the system will keep improving so players can have safe experiences.
- Players’ role in the community – Throughout the six-month period that this report covers, over 33 million reports were sent in by players, with communications (messages, Parties, etc.) taking up 46% of reports and general conduct taking up 43% of reports. Content moderators are reported to be on call around the clock.
- Safety measures players can take – This section highlights how players can apply various safety settings related to their Microsoft accounts, ranging from message filters to parental controls at any given time when they use Xbox services.
Finally, the Community Safety piece from Xbox concludes with ways that players can help this cause. These include continuing to provide a steady stream of feedback relating to player conduct and features, allowing Microsoft to improve its safety features and settings going forward. We’ll continue to update as this story develops.
