On Friday, Twitter quietly removed the egg as the default avatar, replacing it with a silhouette on a grey background. The egg avatar had become synonymous with trolls, a problem that continues to haunt Twitter. The infamous egg was tied to trolls so much that in March, Twitter introduced a feature to mute users with the egg avatar as an ant harassment tool.
The egg avatar reached meme status on the social network, representing a Twitter account that was hastily created to stay anonymous and harass users online.
Twitter wanted to move away from the egg’s negative imagery, so it introduced the new silhouette. But it’s not like it was the egg that made the troll. It’s the troll that made the egg, and the superficial change hasn’t done much to stop harassment on Twitter.
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