Backstory:
An egg icon that for years marked profiles of new Twitter users was gone Monday, a victim of "trolls" who often hid behind them to launch anonymous online attacks.
For seven years, anyone who created a Twitter account automatically got an egg icon as their profile picture, which they were then invited to customize with images of their own.
"This was a playful way to reference how eggs hatch into birds that send all the Tweets you see on Twitter!" the San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging service said in an online post.
Some people left the eggs as their profile images for the fun of it, but "trolls" who created accounts just to fire off abusive comments were known to leave eggs unchanged as well.
"We've noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to harass others -- often they don’t take the time to personalize their accounts," Twitter said.
"This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior."
New Twitter users with eggs as profile pictures risked being mistaken for trolls at first glance, according to the service.
The new profile icon is a generic silhouette of a person, slightly reminiscent of a small egg atop a larger one.
"The new default image feels more like an empty state or placeholder, and we hope it encourages people to upload images that express* themselves," Twitter said.
* Eggcept people who eggspressed themselves with that untouched egg.
<< Home