Hi Ernest,
Our tech lead reviewed this solution and found the problem was caused by a WP setting though still a Peepso coding issues primarily.
His comments are below:
Essentially the flaw is that Peepso hooks into the get_avatar and get_avatar_url filters when it probably needs to hook into the pre_get_avatar and pre_get_avatar_data filters.
The flaw can be circumvented by enabling the “Show Avatars” option in WordPress “Discussion Settings”. Fairly sure that setting has no other affects for us since Peepso overrides our comments sections.
Thanks,
Phil.