Preserve Integrity with Blocking API

Integrity is a vital component of any application ecosystem. It preserves the principles and policies in your code of conduct and applies to each person who engages with your app. Integrity includes the ability for people to mitigate unpleasant social experiences within an app, and know that their preferences will be honored. By improving the integrity of your app, you contribute to a safe and healthy VR ecosystem and an improved experience for everyone.

To help you maintain the integrity of your app, we recently launched the Blocking API, included in Platform SDK v40. If someone has blocked another person on the platform for any reason, the Blocking API enables you to integrate and uphold those blocks to create a safer experience and protect people from bad actors they previously encountered and blocked.

A user can choose to block specific profiles within apps that have integrated the Blocking API. The API allows you to fully control the trigger and activation of the blocking dialog, which could include gestures, profile links, in-game icons, and more. Once activated, the dialog provides an overview of what it means to block someone and a prompt to confirm or cancel the block. After confirming a block, the person who initiated the block is brought back into your app to pick up where they left off with minimal friction. This block will be honored by other apps that are also using the Blocking API. Blocks that are made at the platform level using the Oculus UI will also be applied to apps integrated with the Blocking API.

To protect privacy, users are not notified when they have been blocked by someone else. After someone is blocked, they won't be able to:

This API returns a list of app-scoped IDs that provide blocking data from your app’s community, which you can use to honor blocks that were made elsewhere on the Meta Quest Platform. This centralizes blocking across integrated apps on the platform, building continuity and trust across your community. If your app already has an internal blocking list, the Blocking API provides blocking data that you can use to update your own list while simultaneously upholding integrity across the platform. While Meta reviews user reports, we do not review user blocks nor automatically enforce additional action against users that are blocked.

As more developers implement this API, your community can trust that once they block someone, they won’t have to encounter them again, even when they switch between new apps and experiences.

To get started integrating the Blocking API, check out the documentation. Thank you for prioritizing the integrity of your app.