Twitter announced a new default profile picture, switching from the well-known egg to a simple human silhouette. Twitter hopes that this change will encourage all users to switch to the default image with a real photo of themselves and also discourage people from remaining anonymous or being associated with trolls. Twitter also said it's trying to update its brand and to "help prompt more self-expression. " We hope it encourages people to upload images that express yourself."
In a recent report, Twitter announced new muting features that make it easier for users to filter out unwanted content from notifications and as well as, timelines. The company also recently stopped counting @usernames towards the character count in tweets. The egg has been Twitter's default profile picture for almost seven years, but just recently it has taken on a new meaning beyond the cute bird motif. Twitter trolls, bots and others who use the site totally for abuse and harassment choose to remain anonymous, more so the egg photo has become a signifier for this type of user. Twitter have noticed with most of the accounts that have been created only to harass others, more often, users don't take the time to personalize or use their own accounts.
In lieu of the tainted egg, the design team has come up with a generic head-and-shoulders "place photo here" symbol to make it clear to all users that they should upload a unique image. The design team notes that they obsessed over creating a "gender-balanced" silhouette.Furthermore, Twitter has rolled out a series of updates targetted at online safety and curbing harassment lately which includes an effort to proactively identify abusive accounts and a "mute" feature it first rolled out last November and which recently expanded.
