Twitter combats trolls by removing iconic egg profile picture.
Twitter combats trolls again, but will it work?
The famous Twitter egg profile picture is now a thing of the past…
Trolling has always been an issue on social media, and platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have experienced millions of trolls across their channels over the years.
Each step taken to counteract trolling from the three platforms seems to not work very well.
In an attempt to cut down the online abuse people are suffering, Twitter have replaced their “egg” profile picture with a “gender neutral” one.
They issued a few statements regarding the change:
“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. This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior, which isn’t fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven’t yet personalized their profile photo.”
“This was a playful way to reference how eggs hatch into birds that send all the Tweets you see on Twitter! But now it’s time for something new — something that encourages people to upload their own photos for more personal expression”
Apparently, this new human icon will encourage people to upload actual pictures of themselves; removing anonymity from the equation and, thus, defeating trolls.
I have a gut feeling this won’t have much of an impact…
Of course, trolling not only affects the general society, if affects business’ too, which is why it’s highly important to know how to effectively deal with trolls.
If you’re struggling with social etiquette, read our social media etiquette guide.
“The egg” has been associated with negative behaviour on Twitter for years, however, most say this human default image will become the new face of “bad behaviour”.
Twitter combats trolls, but by how much? Will this new change really do much?
We don’t think so.
As a final send off for this article, and the infamous Twitter egg, here’s the timeline of default images Twitter has had over the years:
