from my testing it seems like in empathy 2.30 the avatar did not change but the empathy's interface showed the changed avatar. i found an old related bug in launchpad too. to my testing pidgin does not change the avatar either.
the bottom line is that telepathy-butterfly did not had this feature implemented and previously empathy was lying which made people think their avatar was changing. ( i might be wrong) if the problem is old there must be another bug too but i was not able to find it. i am attaching the buttefly logs of the time when i change the avatar.
from my testing it seems like in empathy 2.30 the avatar did not change but the empathy's interface showed the changed avatar. i found an old related bug in launchpad too. to my testing pidgin does not change the avatar either.
the bottom line is that telepathy-butterfly did not had this feature implemented and previously empathy was lying which made people think their avatar was changing. ( i might be wrong) if the problem is old there must be another bug too but i was not able to find it. i am attaching the buttefly logs of the time when i change the avatar.
also reported: https:/ /bugs.launchpad .net/ubuntu/ +source/ empathy/ +bug/631428