Twitter rolled out the Twitter Shopping feature for the first time in last year summer. The initiative has features with risk potentiality according to reports. A memo was sent to Twitter employees in the month of July 2022, that stated many features of the Twitter Shopping initiative as possessing high risk.
Twitter shopping allows brands to list items that they want to sale. They can also pin a handful of products at the top of a merchant’s profile. However, a user can’t buy directly like on Instagram. Sale items link out to the merchant’s website. Sellers could display 50 products on their page.
Entries like shop names and descriptions, is where risks lie. The memo warned that threat actors could use these entries for harmful purposes. This is because the initiative allows merchants to add a custom shape name and description directly on the Twitter dashboard.
As of now, the company does not possess any fixed guideline on what it considers as a shop name or description violation. Additionally the memo also mentioned that the platform lacks tools to detect such violations. It also said that there wasn’t any option for users to report the sellers page for content in these fields.
The memo also mentioned that if a feature to share the storefront is released, it will help amplify the spread of harmful content. The memo will bring many opinions and suggestions from the people involved to the table. This would further help in creating the initiative more user convenient and safe.
