I do agree, the whiteness of the layout does seem a tad bit overpowering when you are looking at it for a while,
In regards to this it does seem very wasteful in terms of real estate as well as putting all the text off centre, I would love if they could add a feature to maybe close it, so people who want to see the popular posts can just open it and push the text to the side, but when one wants the text to go back centred they can just close the right part and it will go back to normal
just some food for thought