Twitter's shopping feature

A recently leaked internal memo warns that the shopping feature on Twitter, which is called Twitter Shops, brings harmful content moderation risks that could allow malicious posts. The Verge says in a news story that the memo was sent to Twitter employees in July of last year. But only a small part of it got to the tech news site.

Twitter Shopping Feature

The well-known social media giant launched its shopping feature, called Twitter Shops, early this year or in March. Tech Crunch says that the new shopping feature on the microblogging site lets businesses post a group of 50 products that users can pin to their profiles on the social media giant. When it first came out, the shopping feature was only available for free on its mobile app and website. But unlike how Facebook and Instagram's shopping features work, Twitter's counterpart goes against the grain. In reality, Twitter Shops just sends people to a link outside of the app. It opens the user's online store using the social media giant's in-app browser to get to the online store. Tech Crunch says it works like the new shopping feature on TikTok.

Twitter Memo Warns Against Shopping Feature

And this time, The Verge says that a recent internal memo for the social network's staff shows that the shopping features may pose problems with content moderation. It turns out that some of the features of Twitter Shops, both the ones that are already out and the ones that will come out in the future, have been labeled as high risk. The memo also says that Twitter's new shopping feature did not put content moderation at the top of its list of priorities. To be more specific, the memo says that the feature could be used maliciously by threat actors. It makes sense since shops on the social media platform could change their names and descriptions.

Twitter Confirms Internal Memo

The Twitter spokesperson, Lauren Alexander, told The Verge that the internal memo that was leaked is true. A spokesperson for Twitter says that the memo seems to be part of something called a "feature assessment" that Twitter's product trust team has been working on. Alexander says that they are "always working to make our service safer, and this is especially true when we add new products and features." He also says that they have "deliberately taken the time to test our new shopping surfaces" before putting them in larger markets.