They have a cute logo and posts being called toots is the best thing ever. No idea what you'd want to change on Mastodon

Does it? Also there is so many frontends to choose from and so many other projects. What normal people needs to realize is that they are played and the whole "But there is so much choice" argument is stupid. Imagine going to the shop where there is one type of bread called bread (super easy to use, without crust so people without teeth can chew), one type of milk (cause with bother with people having different preferences), one type of pasta etc. The more choice the better and federated networks offer exactly that. You can walk into the store and choose product you like for whatever reason. But no matter what type of bread you choose, you can still make sandwich. And this whole "W" thing is an easy money grab. Create some media attention, grab VC/European funding and create shitty clone noone will use, then say "Well looks like US corporate offerings are better afterall. Oh look democrats are back".

I designed MULTIVERSE's branding so it's easy to use for people who don't know what a PieFed is. I've shown this website to people who are complete normies when it comes to IT, and they understand how to use it. They don't need to know about federation or tankies or protocols, they just need to be antirealists, and they get it.

Which is to say, branding can be totally up to instance owners, it doesn't matter what the software brands itself as.