"this feature is blocked per your xbox live parental control settings" PC player!!!

Hello community,

Yesterday when I loaded my Forza Horizon 4 game, I received this error "this feature is blocked per your xbox live parental control settings". I have never seen this error previous to today. Im an adult with no such settings present on my account. I searched
online and discovered many people that this issue. It seems to boil down to Xbox players needing to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold in order to play online with their Xbox Console. I have found a few people who received this on PC same as me. Many of the threads
just fizzle out with either the answer being they need live or someone suggesting creating a parent account and deleting it so your account then becomes unrestricted. None of this helps my situation.

Somewhere I discovered a link to my "Privacy & online safety" Area where it looks as though the setting "You can join multiplayer games

Play games with others in the Xbox Live online community. This does not enable communication." This setting was set to blocked. Some people state that you can change this to blocked on Xbox and then back to allowed and then do the same on PC and this will
resolve this issue. This did in fact not help the situation. Every time I try and change this setting, it immediately reverts back to blocked.

So I called customer service. Where I was first told that this was my PC. Then I was told that this was my game. Lastly I was told I need xbox live to play cross platform games because it uses Xbox game servers...

First off I have never ever had this issue. Secondly I was never notified by Notification, email, text message or otherwise that this is what was changing. Still I can find plenty of evidence showing that even recently people tend to ask if they need gold
to play on PC. Its always answered with a resounding NO. The Rep indicated that this was a new policy and it had been that way for months. I have had no problem playing in recent months. Its just been yesterday I had issues. I haven't found any mentions of
policy change online anywhere. What they told me is extremely suspect because he stated that per the Microsoft store Forza Horizon 4 requires gold to play on xbox. Even tho I told him repeatedly I play on PC he says that also means PC because you use xbox
servers.

Now I am confused an upset that somehow I have skated under the radar and allowed to keep playing free on xbox without a gold account. Im completely dubious of this tho.

Question one: Is Xbox live gold required to play on PC if the title is cross platform. If so when did this change and where can I see documentation that this is now the new Normal for us PC players?

Question two: How do I fix my family settings to stop auto blocking me from online games if its not being caused by the requirement of xbox live as per the customer service for Microsoft Xbox support?

:)