Kim Kunes, manager of Xbox Trust and Safety, says voice chat moderation is the next step in Xbox’s holistic approach to ensuring player safety. Xbox believes that gamers play to be friends, be competitive, and enjoy the games, and they expect to be treated fairly, with interactions free of hate and harassment. Xbox has several ways to control the online environment it offers on its consoles, including proactive moderation on text, images, and videos. Now it adds reactive audio moderation by putting in the hands of players an option that allows them to easily capture and send voice chats for review by the security team.
The new feature is designed to be as non-intrusive as possible, allowing gamers to capture and send clips without interrupting their gaming session. If you hear something that you want to report because it violates the Xbox Community Guidelines, you can capture the audio at that time and send it later.
Speaking to The Verge, Kunes ensures that Xbox does not actively listen to or store the voice chats of the players. “Recording is done strictly through the reporting feature and is only available for moderation.” Audio clips will be deleted 24 hours after they are captured, and before this happens the system will remind users that they can still submit their report. On the other hand, Xbox has expanded notifications to inform players about what actions it has taken after a report and why.
“Players are in complete control: you choose what to capture and report. Our feature is designed so that only you, the player, can initiate the capture of the last 60 seconds of activity [del chat de voz] for moderation purposes,” says Xbox’s Dave McCarthy. “Although this tool works similar to video capture, voice clips are for moderation purposes only: they will not appear in your recent captures and cannot be downloaded, modified or shared. Only you will have access to the clip until you submit it with your report. Xbox will not save a voice clip without you, the player, deciding to start the reporting process.”
