Twitter has launched a new “tip jar” feature that lets people send money to others on the social network.
The company says the feature is “an easy way to support the incredible voices that make up the conversation”.
Only a selected group of people can receive tips – a group of Twitter said was made up of “creators”, journalists, experts and non-profits.
But the feature has also been criticised for exposing personal information such as email addresses.
The tip jar function essentially adds a small icon to a user’s profile – on mobile devices only for now – with a drop-down menu for other payment providers such as PayPal, Venmo, or the Cash App, the latter two of which are popular in the United States.
However, because of the payment method, some Twitter users noticed that tipping a PayPal account lets the recipient know the postal address of the tip sender.
In other cases, the recipient’s email address could be seen, whether or not any money was sent.
Following security expert Rachel Tobac highlighting the issue, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour thanked her for the “good catch” – but said Twitter could not control how PayPal handled that information.
Instead, Twitter said it was updating the information around the tip jar to make clear that some details might be shared.
