The bloat is coming from inside the house!
Customization is and always will be a key selling point of Linux, that’s why I refuse to recommend any district with gnome as DE.
Gnome is customizable tho. Just not as much as kde:‘ :)
Gnome is easily the least customizable DE in the entire Linux ecosystem.
They dont have anything against customization. They just dont see why they should add explicit support when they had a clear purpose/vision in mind regarding the software they Write and are lazy enough to say: yo its Not our issue when your customization breaks our apps because it our apps werent intended to be Hacked with in your way

webb.is-a.dev/do-not-resize/

This is what gnome devs talking about theming sound like

Please don’t resize our windows

An open letter from an independent app developer to the wider graphical community