With over 100 million monthly active users on our network, we’re proud that PlayStation is home to a large community of gaming fans with a variety of backgrounds. At Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), our team works diligently to make sure these millions of players have a comfortable, safe, and accessible environment to play. Our safety approach consists of three pillars ‘Enforce,’ ‘Control,’ and ‘Shield’, each of them built on innovative technology solutions as well as the insights of our global community and their needs. Ahead of the 21st Safer Internet Day, we celebrate the progress we’ve made in the three pillars to prioritize our players’ safety as well as remind every player of the role they play in creating a positive playing environment.

Enforce- Easier to Understand Code of Conduct

Our Code of Conduct serves as the players’ guide for ensuring a healthy gaming community on PlayStation Network (PSN). To make it easier to understand and more digestible for any player, we refined and updated our Code of Conduct to be consistent globally, separated it from our PSN Terms of Service and User Agreement, and made it more accessible. All new and existing users are required to review, and agree to these rules before playing online. 

PlayStation is for everyone. We encourage all our players to take the time to review the Code of Conduct and policy against hate speech periodically to understand what is acceptable gaming behavior.

Enforce- Skilled Human Moderation for a Positive Community

Moderation is the process of determining whether content reported by users on PSN violates our Code of Conduct and taking appropriate action when a violation is found. At SIE, we have knowledgeable and trained human moderation teams that review content 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We moderate not only messages but also voice chat, profile content, Game Base group names, Online ID, and some in-game communication when they are reported. 

We currently support moderation in over 30 languages and take into consideration the culture, history, laws, etc. where the reporting user is based. We take all reports seriously and all actions taken on reported accounts are done only after the content has been verified by a human moderator. These actions are always communicated and we proactively work to educate our players, including the seriousness of and the actions we will take for negative behavior on PSN such as temporary or permanent suspensions. We also offer players an option to make an appeal against a permanent suspension in 40 countries where PSN is available and aim to expand this for temporary suspensions as well as to more countries.

Control & Shield- Player & Technology Solutions for Trust & Safety

At SIE, we proactively work to shield our players from negative experiences, whether it is through empowering tools and functions to learning and adapting to players’ needs with default settings and automation tactics. 

While we remind our players that they have the ability to control their experiences on PSN through features such as ‘blocking’, ‘muting’, and ‘reporting’ when they experience negative interactions, we have listened to player feedback and implemented solutions to shield players further. We recently enabled a ‘block by default’ function to prevent a negative experience from reoccurring if the ‘reporting’ function was used.  

We are committed to ensuring our youngest and most vulnerable players are protected. Aside from empowering parents with Parental Control tools that allow parents and guardians to customize their children’s settings on PSN, when a child account is created on PSN on PS5, all social privacy settings are set to high by default. This means that, by default, player communication and account visibility are restricted unless these settings are changed by the family manager. 

We are also working in select markets to pilot age verification technology to provide an age-appropriate experience for our younger players. While we are still in a pilot phase, we have gained valuable insight into how we can better assist our young players’ account creation process and will continue to innovate and advance our Trust & Safety solutions to promote a safe and friendly online community for all players.

Everyone Plays a Part in a Positive Player Community

While Safer Internet Day is only celebrated once a year, the online world is always on. Only with commitment from all players can we continue to create and maintain a positive place to play. Your part in reporting malicious activity and following our Code of Conduct is crucial for a better online world. You can always find more information about SIE’s commitment to online safety, including external partners we work with to educate and inform our players, on our corporate website here.

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