Twitter Changes Default Profile Pictures to ‘Inclusive’ and ‘Gender-Balanced’ Head

twitter-default-icon
Charlie Nash

Twitter has changed the default “egg” profile picture for new users to a new “inclusive” and “gender-balanced” head.

In a Friday blog post titled “Rethinking Our Default Profile Photo,” Twitter explained how they settled on the placeholder image for new users.

“For the past seven years, everyone who has created an account on Twitter starts out with their default profile photo as an egg,” Twitter declared. “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. So today, we’re introducing a new default profile photo.”

“After deciding on a figure, we began our refinements. We had to determine how to bring inclusivity into our single default profile photo, given that we don’t require people to specify their gender on Twitter,” the company explained. “We felt that the circle of the head in the figure still seemed masculine, even though it technically had no design characteristics to indicate that it was a man. So for inspiration, we looked at how women are portrayed in generic, wayfinding iconography, such as bathroom signs, and noticed that the only difference between the sexes is the shape of their clothing.”

“Regardless, people have come to associate the circle head with masculinity, and because of this association, we felt that it was important to explore alternate head shapes,” they concluded. “We reviewed many variations of our figure, altering both the head and shoulders to feel more inclusive to all genders. When the shoulders were wider, the image felt overly masculine, so we decreased the width of the shoulders and adjusted the height of the figure. As a result of these iterations, we ended with a more gender-balanced figure.”

In the post, Twitter also claimed that they made the new default picture use a gray palette “to make this image accessible for those with visual impairments.”

Several users mocked the announcement, including author and conservative activist Mike Cernovich.

“This reads like a bad satire of corporate culture,” Cernovich declared. “It’s real, Twitter is not changing course, it’s getting worse.”

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/847853521441624064

Others pointed out the absurdity of Twitter focusing its attention of changing the default profile picture when there are larger issues that have sill not been addressed.

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/847851419193327617

The new default profile picture has already been rolled out, with both new and current users who have yet to add their own custom photo receiving the gray head replacement.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

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