Gnu social is an open platform, so as others have stated you can host your own. And, it allows you to customize the look and feel pretty much without limit; ho

Gnu social is an open platform, so as others have stated you can host your own. And, it allows you to customize the look and feel pretty much without limit; however you wish it to look. I can't explain exactly why the quitter network or the default Gnu social network look the way they do...but my guess would be for new user comfort; sort of to provide a familiar environment. But again, at the end of the day, because gnu social is open source, you can tweak your network to suit your needs.