egg
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egg is either a reference to an easter egg or the default profile icon on Twitter from September 2010 until 2017-03-30 which was abandoned because it had become associated with trolls and bots.
Twitter egg
Issues
- 2017-02-03 Ars Technica: The art of the troll: New tool reveals egg users’ … posting patterns / When an account makes 500 posts a day, that's a sure sign that there’s something amiss.
"Egg" accounts—Twitter profiles that have the default "egg" avatar instead of a profile photo—are frequently associated with bots and throwaway accounts. But they're also associated with people who just don't post that often and may not know how (or care) to change their profile picture.
How to filter Twitter eggs
- 2017-03-02 How To Filter Out Twitter Egg Accounts
Under "Advanced filters" you have the option of muting notifications from a variety of different types of accounts. Toggle on the option to mute people "who have a default avatar"
Twitter dropping eggs
- 2017-03-31 Twitter blog: Rethinking our default profile photo
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.
- 2017-03-31 QZ: Twitter’s redesign raises the question: What came first, the troll or the egg?
Twitter’s design team explains in a March 31 blog post that they’re changing the default profile avatar because the egg has become a symbol of online trolling.
- 2017-03-31 Daily Dot: Twitter creates most boring image possible to replace its iconic egg
…it was time for something that would encourage people to upload their own photos for personal expression. Apparently, the egg was prohibiting that from happening because some users thought it was “fun and cute.”
- 2017-04-03 The Guardian: The Twitter egg is dead – so can you crack the perfect profile picture? / The site has ditched its default avatar after it became synonymous with trolls, replacing it with a shadowy head and shoulders. Surely we can do better than that ...
… the Twitter egg has finally cracked. Over the past few years, the default profile picture – which was introduced in 2010 as a way to illustrate that a new user was about to “hatch” – has become visual shorthand for trolls, bots and fury.
- 2017-04-04 WIRED: RIP, Twitter Egg. It Was Good Knowing You, However Anonymously / With the social-media platform killing off its infamous avatar, we pay our respects to the departed.
… the egg's super-harassy reputation, which has only grown during its seven-year life. So good job, Twitter! Way to change the abstraction that people associate with drive-by racism and spammy group DMs!