Leaked Twitter Memo Says Shopping Feature Could Cause 'Individual or Societal Harm'

A recently leaked internal Twitter memo claims that shopping features on Twitter pose content moderation risks and could be used “in a way that leads to individual or societal harm.”

The Verge reports that a leaked internal memo warns of the danger of a new Twitter shopping feature that could allegedly be used “in a way that leads to individual or societal harm.” The memo was sent in early July to a group of Twitter employees across various teams with the email warning that content moderation hasn’t been prioritized in shopping.

Twitter shopping was first released last Summer and allows brands to list items for sale and pin a handful of products at the top of a merchant’s profile. While similar features on platforms such as Instagram allow users to purchase products directly within the app, Twitter’s shopping feature links users to an outside merchant’s website.

Twitter released an expanded version of the shop module earlier this year that allows sellers to list and showcase as many as 50 products in their storefront and was available to all U.S. merchants as of June.

In the memo, one section titled “risk assessment” notes that several elements of Twitter’s e-commerce tool are listed as “high risk.” One concern is that merchant-generated fields such as shop names and descriptions could be used in harmful ways.

The memo says that the platform does not yet have a policy on what is considered a shop name or description violation and lacks guidance on how violations should be handled. Currently, Twitter users can click into and browse merchant storefronts but are unable to share the storefronts with other users or via a link. The internal memo lists the ability to share storefronts as “high” on its risk assessment saying that the ability to do so could lead to harmful content being amplified further.

“Shareable Shops therefore increase the likelihood that users may see violative Shops, or violative goods contained in a Shop,” the memo reads. “It may also incentivize bad actors to amplify harmful or violative goods by tweeting and sharing their own Shop.”

A Twitters spokesperson commented on the memo stating:

We’re always working to improve the safety of our service and that is particularly true for the addition of new products and features. We have been intentional about taking the time to test our new shopping surfaces so that — before we scale or expand to new markets — we have the opportunity to gather learnings to better inform our approach to health and safety and develop additional infrastructure and policy needs.

Leaked Twitter Memo Says Shopping Feature Could Cause ‘Individual or Societal Harm’

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