True, I remember that and it sounds that way; but a Hot Fix could still have come out at some point the past couple months to have it temporarily removed until it was fixed/sorted out more. Here’s the post you’re referring to, to offer users a chance to read the statement for themselves, as is:
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/the-devs-have-abandoned-us/74312/7?u=darkness01101
Constructive discussion-wise, this feature should have been disabled until fixed, imo. Surely, the API or whatever is connecting the Xbox Online Safety app with AoE2:DE could have been temporarily disabled. Or at least a statement given advising Steam users that they can log out of Xbox Live if they don’t like the filtration; since it sounds like that’s what we can do to avoid it, per Ardaleia’s find, noted above and quoted here. (It’s unfortunate we need to dig through multiple threads and hundreds of pages about the filter and be one of the lucky ones to stumble on a post on how to fix the issue)…
I wonder if this is the cause of me not hearing teammate audio taunts for a long time, too. If so, it’s too bad I never got a response to my bug report saying to simply log out of Xbox Live. (Note: I still need to test my hypothesis.)