Twitter is concerned that bad actors could exploit its shopping features

Well, it appears that Twitter has some serious concerns regarding one of its features. Last summer, the social media enabled users to make purchases directly from the platform. US businesses received the ability to use custom shop names and create shopping sections on their profiles to list and sell items. However, The Verge was able to obtain a portion of an internal memo sent to some Twitter teams, which talks about the company’s concerns regarding this exact feature. More specifically, it talks about the problems that could occur if someone with bad intentions wants to use Twitter’s e-commerce function to sell illegal or dangerous items.

The memo contains a section entitled “risk assessment,” which lists a few high-risk elements for Twitter’s shopping feature. One of these is the merchant fields, like shop names and descriptions, which, according to the memo, could be used by bad actors in harmful ways.

The biggest problem is that, at least at the moment, Twitter doesn’t have good enough ways to deal with such “bad actors.” According to the memo, the platform uses automated detection tools that search for sketchy things in individual product listings, but its proactive measures aren’t enough because the company lacks the manpower needed to offer better detection.

Another concern that Twitter has is the shareability of the stores. At the moment, users can’t share the storefronts, but if Twitter introduces such a feature, it could give bad actors the ability to share their dangerous items and reach even more people.

According to a Twitter spokesperson, the memo is genuine and is part of a new initiative that allows teams to share their ideas on how to make product releases safer. The spokesperson also stated that Twitter is always searching for ways to improve the safety of its services and that this is especially true when it wants to add new features to its platform.