Ah yes, comparing shit to shit. Although there's basically no other choice anymore...
Anyways, I once tried removing the profile pictures in Dino. That's it. Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. After poking around, found that GTK literally has devtools like a web browser, albeit a bit more annoying to use. Found that there's is a "hidden" checkbox, if I check that it hides all profile pictures. Great, I thought. Then tried CSS:
display: none !important; // nah, that would be too naive
hidden: 1; // nope
opacity: 0; // doesn't remove from layout
width: 0px; // nope
Gave up, found the relevant docs after going through a bunch of useless ones, and all of the rules fit on one page. None of them remove a fucking element. And that's because none of these are meant for the user (have you met the average Gn*me user?). And basically all of them have native counterparts anyway, so they are just an illusion of choice to the developers, too.

it's more UX than UI here, no?