Six Years of Gemini | Hacker News Reader

Six Years of Gemini

geminiprotocol.net

216 pointsbrson166 comments

I'll add my name to the list of people who like the idea and were very curious about it when they first heard about it but now don't think about it as much.

It's very fun to develop for. The simplicity of the protocol means that writing a server, client or "web app" (equivalent) is a weekend project. So there is a proliferation of software for it but that doesn't necessarily translate into content.

There is content, though. My favourite aggregator is gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ and I do still drop by there regularly enough to have a browse. It's no longer all meta content which is good (people used to just use Geminispace to write about Gemini). It's still quite tech/FOSS focused, unsurprisingly.

I agree with the other comments that are saying that a simple markdown would have been better than gemtext.

Whenever Gemini gets mentioned on HN there are a lot of commenters who seem to have an issue with the "views" or "values" of some people within the community. They never go into detail. I can honestly say I'm not sure what the issue is. As a very middle-of-the-road centrist I have never had much of an issue with the content I find on Gemini. Sure, you had a few interesting "characters" on the mailing list (back when it existed) but they were a minority and it was nothing you don't also find on the web. I guess people there tend to be more dogmatic about sticking to FOSS and keeping the internet non-corporate, which can rub people the wrong way, but again you can find similar views on the web (and IMO it makes for interesting discussions even if I don't agree with the dogmatism).

As an early adopter and developer of a couple of service oriented capsules, as time went by my interest faded completely. I'm a strong advocate of live and let live, so this is not a critique or discouragement post, but rather my own perspective.

Like many have mentioned already, I personally would have preferred pure markdown and no gemtext at all. Similarly, and although I understand the reasoning behind making encryption mandatory, I believe it should be optional in the spirit of KISS. I'm more of a minimalist than I am a privacy evangelist. In this regard, I felt a bit out of place within the gemini community.

Finally, the argument that it takes a new protocol to avoid a broken user experience, often exemplified by someone jumping from a simple and well behaved HTTP website into a chaotic one, doesn't resonate much with me. Again, I get it, but I can live with visiting only the websites or gopherholes I want. This comes with a great advantage. Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all gemini capsules. I missed a broader set of topics when I used gemini and ultimately that was what killed my interest.

All that said, I loved it while I used it and I stumbled upon some really nice people. Maybe I'll fall in love again one day...

gluon

The thing I liked about Gemini and its self-imposed limitations is that it was very much impossible to create a misbehaving Gemini document. There is no way a Gemini browser will phone home, run malicious code on my side, grab/upload my browser history or send sensor or other data because I forgot to turn off various options, etc. To me the entire thing was much more trustworthy.

You can of course recreate this experience using HTTP and modern browsers, but both are so complicated that you don't know what's really happening without a lot of work.

I liked that as well, but wouldn't remember it before reading your comment. I guess all in all it is a pretty nice protocol, the only real problem for me is that the content is too niche to appeal to me on a daily basis.

This should really be a more common feature in web browsers. Yes, it can be achieved by turning off JavaScript and so on but it should be a feature like Incognito mode where you have either a high visibility toggle button, or open tabs in this mode, where tabs with the same kind as the parent keeps being opened in this mode. That way, you’d have Gemini for the regular web just by making websites that don’t break when that kind of code is disabled.

HTTP has infinitesimal complexity compared to basically any other feature of a browser.

Instead of inventing a separate protocol, you can invent your own html meta tag that marks a website to be JavaScript-free.

This will let you create search engines that crawl and index these sites specifically.

With .gmi files or "gemini://" URLs and a compliant Gemini client, I don't need to even need to load the document beforehand to know if it intends to execute code on my device or not. It already won't by design, it won't in the future, and it doesn't require settings management, vendor whitelisting, popups, or caring who makes the browser for me to make it behave that way.

Whereas that .html document with it's noexec meta tag might be updated in the future to suddenly contain code.

You can create a browser plugin that detect such tag and automatically turns off JavaScript.

You can even configure the plugin to detect if a page contains JavaScript while claiming not to be.

With a dedicated Gemini client I simply have to trust/verify code provided the client developer.

With your solution now I have to trust/verify code provided by the browser developer(s), the apparatus the browser provides for extensions, and code provided by the extension developers.

If I'm super paranoid I can just look at a .gmi in Notepad or vi and understand it. I can't do that with all but the most basic HTML.

Ok I guess if you are that level of paranoid - even though both Chromium and Firefox are open source and under a heck of a lot of scrutiny for security vulnerabilities - then I understand why you prefer Gemini.

I just feel the fact that it cuts it self off from the wider clearnet completely kills your audience reach, if you’re ok writing to a very small insular community then sure, but most people want their writings to be read by as many people as possible.

> Again, I get it, but I can live with visiting only the websites or gopherholes I want. [...] Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all gemini capsules.

I agree. Personally, I'm a fan of progressive enhancement.

E.g. I use this Hugo partial to hide emails; it de-obfuscates an address using JavaScript, and falls back to printing a shell command:

    {{ $id := substr (sha256 .) 0 6 }}
    <a id="{{ $id }}"><noscript>echo </noscript>{{ base64Encode . }}<noscript> | base64 -d -</noscript></a><script>var el = document.getElementById("{{ $id }}"); el.innerText = atob("{{ base64Encode . }}"); el.href = "mailto:" + el.innerText;</script>

(Hopefully HN will preserve all the characters.)

Similar for CSS, although that one is a forever WIP...

This kind of approach is exactly why I believe we can have a nice experience over HTTP. Progressive content enhancement nails the perfect balance between too simple and too bloated. I personally believe client side scripting is important and ideally should be used sparingly. Your example illustrates a perfectly reasonable use case where JavaScript makes sense, yet still providing a scriptless alternative that solves the problem. Nice stuff.

I can attest that CSS is very effective for obfuscating e-mail. I displayed my academic e-mail on my webpage for over half a decade using CSS to flip the text direction[1] without getting significant spam.

[1] https://superuser.com/a/235965

> Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all gemini capsules. I missed a broader set of topics when I used gemini and ultimately that was what killed my interest.

This is definitely Gemini's biggest weakness. I looked around on it a bit when it was gaining attention, and most of the sites I saw were just complaints about how bloated the modern web had become. I get it, but it's kind of treating the whole thing as a novelty rather than an actual medium that can be used to convey information. It didn't have the wide and varied userbase that even the mid-90s academic web they were trying to replicate had. It kind of reminded me of all the people who write a static site generator for their blog, and then only write a single blogpost about how they made their static site generator.

There is some good information to be found actually, although it is true that it is not much. However, if you have something to write, then you can write it, and then if they are published then there will be more things to read.

Unfortunately, the topics I'm interested in writing about often require images, sound, and video to do a good page covering them.

You can still link to images, sounds, videos, and any other kind of files, even with the same protocol. (Inline pictures would be helpful for documents that you want to print out, or view at the same time as the text, though.)

> I personally would have preferred pure markdown and no gemtext at all

The gemtext format is much simpler than markdown, which can avoid the complexity of handling markdown files. (One thing I dislike about markdown and other text-based formats (including JSON, etc) is that escaping will then be required, which can make it messy).

(Nevertheless, you can serve files of any format like you can with HTTP and some other protocols.)

> Similarly, and although I understand the reasoning behind making encryption mandatory, I believe it should be optional in the spirit of KISS

I agree. (My own "Scorpion" protocol does make it optional, for this reason. However, the existing server implementation does not currently implement TLS, although the protocol does allow (and also recommend) it, as long as any files that do not require X.509 client authentication can also be accessed without TLS.)

(Also, if you are serving only static files with Gemini then you could also use Spartan which uses the same file format as Gemini. If you have dynamic files, then it is going to be more difficult because of the differences between the protocols, although it might still be possible.)

> Finally, the argument that it takes a new protocol to avoid a broken user experience, often exemplified by someone jumping from a simple and well behaved HTTP website into a chaotic one [...]

This might miss the point. As the FAQ mentions, there are benefits of a new protocol and file format, including a simplified implementation compared with HTML, and this does not prevent the possibility of also making and/or using well designed websites.

(If you specifically do want a subset of HTTP, HTML, and JavaScript, there is "gemiweb0", and is intended to also be compatible with common web browsers. However, this does not mean that Gemini and other protocols and file formats are worthless; they are still beneficial, in my opinion.)

Regardless of the technical shortcomings of the protocol, a grassroots group of individuals has managed to create a viable new network protocol. The user base is small, but it is not tiny and it is not nonexistent and it has been going for years now. You can download a Gemini client and find regularly updated blogs on a Gemini search engine. You can have discussions on Gemini applications like Antenna or Station. It has managed to solve many of the problems it intended to solve (privacy, resource bloat, protocol specification bloat, etc.).

What did it do for privacy?

I think Gemini is great, and read from Nyxt browser. Don't know if I've seen any references to privacy benefits, so curious.

I’m pretty sure they talk about privacy directly in the spec, but I haven’t read the spec in years. Going off the top of my head, they had the decision to not include things like user agent headers or anything that resembles a cookie specifically with the goal of preserving privacy. There is also the obvious point of the protocol not supporting raw TCP sockets and requiring encryption by default.

For those that were thinking of the LLM and don’t know what this is, like me, their FAQ details what it is: https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi

Thanks. For this that don't want to have to click through:

Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between hosted files. Both the protocol and the format are deliberately limited in capabilities and scope, and the protocol is technically conservative, being built on mature, standardised, familiar, "off-the-shelf" technologies like URIs, MIME media types and TLS. Simplicity and finite scope are very intentional design decisions motivated by placing a high priority on user autonomy, user privacy, ease of implementation in diverse computing environments, and defensive non-extensibility. In short, it is something like a radically stripped down web stack. See section 4 of this FAQ document for questions relating to the design of Gemini.

It was sad seeing the hate for it on here when it was new-ish, and while I haven't used it in a while, I'm glad to see it still kicking around. Such a neat and fun project.

I don’t hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do what it does, but better.

The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren’t SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code.

HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it isn’t HTTP’s fault. It’s the sites you visit.

If you want to build new and smaller communities, I really think we should be building for browsers. Perhaps a website design manifesto is in order.

The limits of the medium and the creativity this enforces is why people like it. It caters a niche audience with a shared set of values. I get why people don't really care for it personally or on a technical level (myself included), but it always surprises me that it's hard for people to understand that others do.

I agree the limitations are what makes the platform great, but I really wish they had included a simple image block in the spec.

Text only is just a little to limiting if you ask me.

Many browsers will render a link to an image as an embedded image block!

> The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren’t SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code.

That is a microscopic subset of the modern web.

I don't use Gemini— though I am highly tempted —but I expect some of the attraction is that you can click on any link and pretty much guaranteed not to be socked in the face with a sign-up-for-my-newsletter or cookies-accept-all-yes-later or paragraph-ad-paragraph-ad-paragraph-ad or fiddling with NoScript to find the minimum amount of Javascript that will let you read some article that looks interesting. In Gemini, all that friction just goes away.

You can achieve that on HTTP with a browser extension or customized browser that checks for certain tags in the page, or disables certain features altogether. It isn’t the transport’s fault.

With all respect, this viewpoint rivals the infamous Dropbox comment.

Problem: you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work?

A) Develop a whole new transport protocol that does less than HTTP, develop client applications that use this protocol, convince a sufficient number of people to use this protocol, at least to the point where the majority of your activity happens there?

B) Install a handful of browser extensions that block ads and other nuisances on the modern www, and have it working right away?

What's more fun? Definitely A.

You are not solving the stated problem. You are just admitting that working on a new protocol is a masturbatory, "the journey is the reward" kind of exercise.

I'm not aiming to solve the stated problem, I'm having fun with gemini.

Considering "B" is becoming less possible, thanks to Google dropping Manifest 2, and going out of their way to enforce a lot more tracking, "A" looks like a lot less effort - you don't have to fight FAANG.

Chrome is not the only browser out there. Firefox is still a good browser. If you depend on Chromium: Brave is keeping Manifest v2 and their ad-blocking extensions work out of the box.

And HTTP is not the only protocol out there. Plenty of others exist. Like Gemini, that has multiple browser implementations.

What's your point, exactly?

My point is that the choice of protocol (much like the browser) is not a relevant factor if your goal is to be able to participate in the www without dealing with the issues.

We can have all the upside of an http-based web, without dealing with the downsides. The converse is not true. A Gemini network is by design limited in functionality, which is a downside that can not be mitigated.

> My point is that the choice of protocol (much like the browser) is not a relevant factor if your goal is to be able to participate in the www without dealing with the issues.

Right, but that isn't the goal of Gemini. It's goal is to create a distinct ecosystem, not to participate in the existing one with marginally less annoyance.

Even worse! This makes the whole proposal even more misguided.

Different ecosystems only make sense when we have distinct populations that might be as well considered different species.

There's no 'proposal' here -- this is a review of an active ecosystem that has already had its ideas implemented and iterated on for the past six years.

Having a different ecosystem is the exact intention of this project. If that's not for you, you're certainly not required to participate, but the world is a vast continuum of variation, and is full of niches and clines that are intentionally distant from the global mean. Complaining that non-mainstream stuff exists seems pretty nuts to me -- the world is full of 'distinct populations'.

> a vast continuum of variation, and is full of niches and clines that are intentionally distant from the global mean.

But they are all sharing the same world. It's all the same ecosystem.

My objection is not because I am against people trying to do something different. My objection is to this delusional idea that this work needs to be isolated from everyone else. It's sterile at best and elitist at worst.

Its a protocol. A means of communication. It can't be isolated, by definition. There's plenty of cross-platform things using it.

It is as elitest and isolationist as RSS - another limited system.

The format is limited, to preserve the user agent's ability to act... As a user's agent, rather than the host. That's it.

Your objection seems to be... People walking a path you wouldn't.

If you want "an user agent that can act as a user's agent", you just need to use a better user agent. They exist. They work. You don't need a whole transport protocol to achieve that.

My objection is to the justifications people are using to walk this path. Even here, we have different people trying to argue completely different things regarding the isolationist nature. You say that it can't be isolated, Gormo says it's "designed to be airgapped".

Look, I've spent quite a significant amount of time exploring alternatives for a saner web. I've got on the microformats train. I know my way around the indieweb. I'm right now working on some stuff that I hope can make the fediverse easier to use and more accessible. I'm not saying to give up the fight. Quite the opposite: to me it seems that the Gemini crowd is just playing with their toy miniature soldiers and claiming that this is the best we can do. It seems immature and poorly-thought out.

It's worth remembering that people are drawn to projects like Gemini for a range of reasons. That's not a weakness, it's a feature. One person might use it as a minimalist publishing platform. Another might enjoy the simplicity or find it a helpful alternative to today's web. Others might engage with it as a space for experimentation. These aren't contradictory; they’re just different use cases reflecting different priorities.

Saying that "better user agents exist" may be true for some people’s needs, but not everyone shares the same definition of "better." You're welcome to recommend user agents you think are worth trying — many of us are curious and open-minded — but it’s not really about convincing everyone to see things your way. Preferences aren’t problems to be solved.

And honestly, for a lot of us, Gemini isn’t some war we're waging. It’s a community project, a space to build and share things that resonate with us. If it doesn’t click for you, that’s fine. But calling it "masturbatory" or "playing with miniature soldiers" doesn’t add anything meaningful to the conversation. It just makes it harder for others to engage in good faith — and that’s unfortunate, because thoughtful disagreement is welcome. Dismissiveness isn't.

It's not FAANG anymore, it's GAYMMAN now

Option “B” implies a cat and mouse game, which you can never win.

You can’t win a game designed and implemented by a mega corporation which is specially made to earn them money and protect their monopoly by being reactive and defending all the time. Instead you have to change the game and play with your own rules.

That’s option “A”.

> Instead you have to change the game and play with your own rules.

That only works if you can convince the a substantial part of the participants to also play your game.

It's very easy to create an alternative internet where we can take away the power from incumbents. The hard part is creating all the activity that is taking place in the current one.

"Oh, but I can mirror the parts I want from the current internet into the new one!"

Not without playing into the same cat-and-mouse game.

Who says I'm trying to pull in everyone from the old internet to the new internet (Gemini)? If the people I care comes along, that's enough for me, and it's up to them.

For example, I switched to Mastodon, and follow people who I really want to follow are already there, plus I met a ton of interesting people, and was able to see real forms of people I followed before, so I have updated my views on them.

> "Oh, but I can mirror the parts I want from the current internet into the new one!"

Personally, I see Gemini or other protocols as equals to HTTP/S. For example, my blog is already text in most cases, has a full content RSS feed, so, also publishing a Gemini version is not mirroring what's on the web already, just adding another medium to my blog.

If I was pumping a 3rd party site I don't own from web to Gemini with a tool, then you'd be right, but publishing to Gemini is not different than having a RSS feed in my case.

> For example, I switched to Mastodon (...) and was able to see real forms of people I followed before, so I have updated my views on them.

Isn't that strong evidence that it is possible to have a "human-scale" web built on HTTP, and consequently that there is not much benefit in restricting yourself to a protocol that is designed to be limited?

> Personally, I see Gemini or other protocols as equals to HTTP/S

Except they are not. Maybe it can do enough of the things that you care about, but Gemini is (by design!) meant to do less than HTTP.

> publishing to Gemini is not different than having a RSS feed in my case.

Again: if all you want is to be able to publish something in a simple format, then why should we care about the transport protocol?

I get the whole "the medium is the message" idea, I really do. I get that people want a simpler web and I look forward to a time where we have applications developed at a more "human scale". But I really don't get why we would have to deliberately be stripping ourselves of so much power and potential. Talking about Gemini as the best solution to the problems of the modern web is like saying we should wear chastity belts to deal with teenage pregnancies.

Yes, but it's important to understand that limitations are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case. It takes careful deliberation and restraint to keep something tidy. Mastodon does this by limiting its scope and organizational structure. We as humans like to abuse capabilities. So, to keep something tidy and prevent (or realistically slow down) rot, you need a limit somewhere. Putting that limit to humans vs. the protocol is a trade-off.

In that scenario W3C doesn't put any brakes, Mastodon puts brakes on development, organizational structure and scope, and Gemini puts brakes on the protocol. So, it's the most limited but hardest to abuse in a sense.

I probably worded my "I see them as equals" part of my comment wrong. I know Gemnini is a subset of HTTP, it's more Gopher than HTTP, and that's OK by me. Moreover, that leanness is something I prefer. See, the most used feature on my browser is Reader mode, and I amassed enormous amount of links in Pocket just because of the reading experience it offered.

> I really don't get why we would have to deliberately be stripping ourselves of so much power and potential.

Because power corrupts and gets abused. A friend of mine told me that they now use Kamal which makes deployment easy. How it's deployed? Build a container -> Push to registry -> pull the container on the remote system -> runs the container -> sets up and runs a proxy in front of that container to handle incoming connections.

That's for a simple web application...

I mean, I push files to a web server and restart its process. I'm not against power, I'm against corruption, and given human nature, restraint is something hard to practice, and that's if you want to learn and practice it.

> Talking about Gemini as the best solution to the problems of the modern web is like saying we should wear chastity belts to deal with teenage pregnancies.

I never said Gemini is the only and the best way forward. Again, for me It's another protocol, which offers a nice trade-off for some people sharing a particular set of values. It's like a parallel web like BBSes or public terminals (e.g.: SDF).

Being an absolutist benefits no one. We should learn, understand and improve. We can have multiple webs, and we shall be free to roam them in a way we like. I'd love to use my terminal to roam some text only web with my favorite monospace font and terminal theme, but I like to write comments here and think on the replies I get, too.

I find myself preferring a text-only, distraction-free web more and more, and naturally evolving my habits and personal infrastructure in that way, but I'm not carrying a flag, shouting about end-times and preaching stuff as savior. I'm not that person.

> it's important to understand that limitations are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case.

Mastodon may be my preferred social network nowadays, but it's despite the prevalent philosophy from the development team. It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU.

>Because power corrupts and gets abused

The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep everyone in the same small crab bucket. It's to make access to the powerful tools as universal and ubiquitous as possible.

> I push files to a web server and restart its process.

Your friend not being sensible enough to know when to use a tool vs when to keep it simple is not a problem of the tool. Also, talking about deployment methods seems so orthogonal to the discussion that I am not sure it makes sense to carry this conversation further.

> It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU.

Shall the number go up indefinitely? I don't believe so. Something can be attractive to a group of people and the number may float somewhere as people come and go. If the main aim is to make "the line go up", then the users become the product, and this is what I'm against in the first place.

> The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep everyone in the same small crab bucket. It's to make access to the powerful tools as universal and ubiquitous as possible.

While stuffing people from a crab bucket is not the correct analogy for removing capabilities from the medium, I also believe giving people power to realize their dreams, but as you can see, this power corrupts (Meta, Google and Microsoft are great examples of things). Also, if we should give people all the power they need, then we arrive to the abolishing all law and regulation in all areas of the life.

What if someone have the dream of owning a bazooka and we enable them since it's a freedom, and they misfire it to a school bus?

What if we deregulate web space because people shall be free to do whatever they want in the internet, and somebody makes a fortune by selling targeted ads, and what if this ad platform is used to manipulate people to vote in a groomed way (Cambridge Analytica, everyone).

> Your friend not being sensible enough to know when to use a tool vs when to keep it simple is not a problem of the tool.

The tool is the result of exponentially increasing complexity of doing something simple. A perfect real-life example how modern web is bloating itself exponentially given its unlimited nature.

> Also, talking about deployment methods seems so orthogonal to the discussion that I am not sure it makes sense to carry this conversation further.

Please refer to above paragraph.

I agree that we look to the problem with a very different window, and you are not interested in a more minimal, saner or calmer space for distraction and abuse-free (or hard to abuse) environment. We're talking past each other. There's no need to continue this, since there's no desire to flex and widen the perspective.

With no hard feelings, have a nice day. :)

Hope to see you around in another thread.

> Shall the number go up indefinitely?

False dichotomy.

> Also, if we should give people all the power they need, then we arrive to the abolishing all law and regulation in all areas of the life (...)

Non-sequitur.

> The tool is the result of exponentially increasing complexity of doing something simple.

The tool is for someone that needs to solve a problem at a different scale than what you and I need. You don't have to use it. No one is forcing you to adopt it. Their problems do not apply to you and no one is stripping you of the ability to solve your problem the way you see fit.

> there's no desire to flex and widen the perspective.

There is. I'm honestly trying to understand whether there is any real value there. I consider myself to be reasonably capable of arguing for two conflicting points at the same time, provided that the trade-off is consistent.

E.g, I may not agree with the direction that Bluesky has taken, but once you understand their original motivation (to have a "credible exit" strategy for an existing centralized network), then it makes sense. I think that Nostr's decision to tie identity to their cryptographic keys is absolutely moronic, but at least their approach is consistent with their priorities and ideas about decentralization. I think that most ActivityPub devs are creating "horseless carriages" (recreating federated versions of the centralized networks, when ActivityPub has the potential to be the foundation of the Semantic Social Web [0]), but at least this approach can be justified as a stepping stone to reach the larger objective...

I can not say the same about Gemini. It is being developed and is guided only by the things that it does not do. My best attempt of steel-manning it goes like "Gemini users consider themselves so powerless against the traps of Surveillance Capitalism, they think that the only way they can resist the siren song is by tying themselves to the boat mast. They see themselves as alcoholics who know they will relapse if they go out to the bar with their old friends, so they are building a place where drinks are not available."

But this is not the argument I hear. All I hear is a bunch of people talking about how awesome it is to sail the seas while tied to the boat mast.

[0]: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/113143389340566731

That “alcoholic” metaphor? Seriously, what the hell. You don’t have to like Gemini, but reducing the people who use it to self-loathing addicts is ridiculous.

I use Gemini because I enjoy it. That’s it. It’s fun. It’s weird. It scratches an itch that the modern web doesn’t. Maybe that’s not your thing — fine. But why does someone’s personal enjoyment of a simpler protocol have to be pathologized?

Not everything needs to be justified by some grand ideological framework. Sometimes people just like stuff — and that’s enough. You claim to want to understand different perspectives, but this kind of framing makes it pretty clear you’ve already decided which ones are valid.

If you're really trying to steelman Gemini, maybe start by recognizing that people can engage with technology for all kinds of reasons — curiosity, aesthetics, nostalgia, minimalism, fun — and they don’t owe you a manifesto to justify it.

> people can engage with technology for all kinds of reasons — curiosity, aesthetics, nostalgia, minimalism, fun

Fine! The same thing could be said about retrocomputing enthusiasts. If that's only a hobby, go on and be merry. But don't go around acting like this hobby is an actual, practical solution to the problems of the modern web.

This whole thread started because I asked "you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work?", and you and 3 other people are insisting that alternative A is the best one, but as the conversation went on you are resorting to "I don't owe you a manifesto to justify it".

Well, guess what? If you are willing to make the extraordinary claim that developing a whole protocol and applications to replace HTTP browsers is better than taking 5 minutes to install any decent browser, then yes, you kind do owe a reasonable explanation, and "I use it because I enjoy it" is. not. that.

You're framing this whole conversation as if there's a single, universally agreed-upon set of "problems with the modern web." You're also treating it as though the only valid solutions are the ones that address your version of those problems in the most efficient way possible.

But your original suggestion (installing a handful of browser extensions) doesn’t do much for someone whose interests go beyond tracking scripts, ads, or page weight. For someone who values different aesthetics, a slower pace of change, or the creative possibilities of working within tight constraints, then Gemini might feel like a very practical solution. It may not solve your problems, but it might solve theirs.

As I mentioned earlier, I still use the web. Gemini is not a replacement for me. But using it changes the way I experience the web. Gemini’s minimalism helps me notice and appreciate different aspects of modern web technologies. Likewise, the complexity and richness of the web always makes coming back to Gemini feel like a breath of fresh air. These perspectives can coexist without being contradictory. Not every tool needs to solve every problem. Sometimes I want to spend hours cooking something elaborate. Other times I just want to eat a banana.

Enjoyment is also a valid reason to use a tool. You can take something seriously and still appreciate it for what it is, not only for what it reacts against.

> You're framing this whole conversation as if there's a single, universally agreed-upon set of "problems with the modern web."

No, I'm framing this as "go ask 1000 different people to make a list of the top 10 issues they have with the web, and we will be able to solve 99.995% of them without ditching the web browser and start using a Gemini client to access documents instead".

All the problems you are describing are tractable with a web browser. Disable javascript, disable external stylesheets, run all the websites you want to read through wallabag and then just browse with a preset userstyle. Use lynx for all I care. That's all there is to it. Any of these approaches will get you the same type of experience you'd be getting from a Gemini client - with the difference that we won't need to know or care about it.

You might keep looking for justification for experimenting with other things. You might find joy in using them. It's all good, but completely orthogonal to the point. At the end of the day I'm just saying we do not need to switch to a different transport protocol in order to experience a saner web, and y'all are acting like just I'm calling your kid ugly.

You're still trying to invalidate my experience because it doesn’t align with your criteria for what's “necessary.” But I'm not trying to solve your problems. I'm solving mine, in a way that works for me. Your browser ideas wouldn't solve anything for me.

You seem to keep asking for some airtight, utilitarian justification, but not everything people build or use needs to pass through that filter. Some things exist because they offer a different perspective, and that difference can be meaningful even if it doesn't optimize for mainstream efficiency or convenience.

No one's asking you to switch protocols. Most Gemini users don't "switch" protocols, they still use the web alongside Gemini. No one's asking you to even keep replying to any of this. Just leave the thread and forget that Gemini ever existed for all I care. But insisting that the only valid solutions are the ones you’ve pre-approved is a great way to miss the value in approaches that don’t look like yours. And that's exactly what you keep doing.

Seriously, you're the one who's been out of line here: dismissive, condescending, and acting like curiosity itself needs to justify its existence to you. It doesn’t. If you don't like Gemini, all you have to do is look away.

> The tool is for someone that needs to solve a problem at a different scale than what you and I need. You don't have to use it. No one is forcing you to adopt it. Their problems do not apply to you and no one is stripping you of the ability to solve your problem the way you see fit.

False analogy. First, I know what scaling means, and I yell at the tool because it makes something more complicated than it should for any scale. For me, that tool is a bastion of bloat and unnecessary complexity, because I know how I can solve that exact problem with simpler processes at the scale that the tool targets.

> It is being developed and is guided only by the things that it does not do.

Non sequitur. Scope creep is a problem and having a good scope is half of building a good foundation. Exclusion is a more powerful tool for a good scope.

> "Gemini users consider themselves so powerless against the traps of Surveillance Capitalism, they think that the only way they can resist the siren song is by tying themselves to the boat mast. They see themselves as alcoholics who know they will relapse if they go out to the bar with their old friends, so they are building a place where drinks are not available."

False dichotomy.

> But this is not the argument I hear. All I hear is a bunch of people talking about how awesome it is to sail the seas while tied to the boat mast.

Confirmation bias. I told that it can provide an alternative universe for people to use low-distraction services. Another person told that it's just for fun for them. Nobody, I mean, nobody incl. me in this conversation told that it's a total replacement for HTTP/S or current web, but an alternative one for people who want alternatives.

People use BBSes, IRC, Matrix, RSS, etc. etc. Some of them work over HTTP, some are not. Some people prefer GUI tools for these, others use TUIs. All of these things augment or provide alternative universes or perspectives to what you want to keep dominant, "Modern Web".

If other people's choices and desires doesn't make sense to you, that's fine! However, painting them in the light you want, and telling that you're trying to understand is not.

It's pretty evident at that point is you only want to confirm and spread your view about something you don't get to like.

You don't have to use Gemini. No one is forcing you to adopt it. Their problems do not apply to you and no one is stripping you of the ability to solve your problem the way you see fit.

> I mean, nobody incl. me in this conversation told that it's a total replacement for HTTP/S or current web, but an alternative one for people who want alternatives.

Look at the start of the thread. My question was "you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work?"

You (among others) came on to argue that not only doing all this investment on Gemini is a solution to this problem, but that it would be easier than using a better web browser.

> If other people's choices and desires doesn't make sense to you

Let me repeat: I was asking about what was the best way to solve a problem. And you wanted to sustain the argument that is less work to solve the problems of modern web by rebuilding in a way that is functionally crippled instead of simply adopting better web browsers. Which already exist.

I have no interest in judging your choices or what you value desires. If you want to get invested in this, I have nothing to say about it. But to try to turn this into a rational and effective course of action is an insult to people's intelligence.

I re-read the thread. Yes, developing a new transport with a well defined subset of the incumbent is a lower effort and better solution for me.

On the other hand, you're still adamantly insisting that everyone says that "Gemini will and shall replace HTTP, cope, duh", while in fact nobody is saying that. Instead, we (as in the people reply to you) say that "That's a neat little protocol which does what we want for some use cases, and we use and enjoy it for the said use cases". It's just an alternative, not a replacement. Seeing it as a replacement and being actively pushed as one is your confirmation bias, again.

Let me repeat: Gemini is the best way to solve that problem for me and some others. And I want and will sustain the argument that rebuilding is a better way for some problems, even though I'm pretty against it most of the time.

BTW, I already use non-chromium browsers for a fact. I never used chromium based browsers daily, and made them default, ever.

Again for the third and last time: I and other people replying to you didn't say Gemini is a replacement to HTTP. It's a neat little protocol which does some things well and used for some use cases, which happens to my main use cases for the thingy called web.

I have no qualms with your choices with views, but to try to portray your confirmation bias as what I and others say is stuffing words to others' mouth and is an insult to people's intelligence.

Not really. You could have tinyweb/oldweb sites identify themselves with a meta tag, and have a browser that only browses those. A opt-in, web-within-a-web. And turns off js, cookies, and images.

You don’t need another transport protocol.

We have Kagi Small Web and Marginalia already, if that's your aim.

How do you stop users who aren't using the custom browser from accessing these 'tinyweb' HTTP sites? How do you prevent content scrapers and search indexers from accessing them? How do you suppress direct incorporation of 'mainstream' web content into 'tinyweb' content?

If your goal is precisely to create an parallel ecosystem that's "airgapped" from the mainstream web, and you're already going to have to develop custom clients, content formats, and server-side configuration to implement it on top of HTTP, and engage in lots of development work to imperfectly isolate the two ecosystems from each other, why wouldn't you just develop a parallel protocol and start with a clean slate?

> How do you prevent content scrapers and search indexers from accessing them?

How do you that with Gemini?

> If your goal is precisely to create an parallel ecosystem that's "airgapped" from the mainstream web

There is no way you can have an air gapped network with public access. The moment this "parallel ecosystem" showed any content that hinted at something lucrative, you will have people creating bridges between the two networks. Case in point: Google and USENET.

> How do you that with Gemini?

You keep it isolated from the ecosystem in which all of those things are taking place.

> The moment this "parallel ecosystem" showed any content that hinted at something lucrative, you will have people creating bridges between the two networks. Case in point: Google and USENET.

The whole point is to minimize the chance of that happening -- by limiting mainstream appeal, keeping it a niche, and avoiding Eternal September -- and to maximize the friction of bridging these two ecosystems. And so far, they've done a fairly good job of it, since Gemini has been expanding for six years without any indication of any of this starting to happen.

> and to maximize the friction of bridging these two ecosystems.

There is no friction. It's trivial to write a program that can scrape a Gemini network.

If there is no one pulling data from Gemini servers yet, is not because it's difficult do it, but merely because it's still too small to be relevant.

> There is no friction. It's trivial to write a program that can scrape a Gemini network.

It's not trivial at all. First, you have to want to do it, then you have to commit time and effort to doing it, then you have to maintain the solution you deploy specifically for Gemini in parallel to your web scraping architecture.

> If there is no one pulling data from Gemini servers yet, is not because it's difficult do it, but merely because it's still too small to be relevant.

Exactly. But it if was using web tech, all of the existing web scrapers could just be pointed at it with minimal effort. So using a separate, custom tech stack is what keeps the threshold of effort in front the threshold of desire.

And using a separate tech stack also creates intentional friction in terms of new user adoption, keeping it slow and maintaining the protocol's niche status. So this also helps keep that threshold of desire distant.

> First, you have to want to do it, then you have to commit time and effort to doing it

Implementing a Gemini to HTTP gateway seems like a perfect type of weekend project for someone that wants to play with a new programming language. With that, any barrier that you think you have is gone. Crawlers will get to you no matter what.

> So using a separate, custom tech stack is what keeps the threshold of effort in front the threshold of desire.

You know what else you could do? Just run your web server on a non-standard port.

Seriously, the more you try to rationalize this as anything else other than hobby, the less sense it makes. Just go with "it's a hobby and I enjoy spending my time with it", and I promise I will get out of your hair.

I don't know what to tell you at this point other than 'eppur si muove' -- you're giving me a bunch of theoretical reasons as to why you think it shouldn't work, and yet Gemini has been around for years now: it is maintaining itself as a distinct niche; it is not full of spam, ads, or slop; its content isn't readily accessible from the web or turning up in major web search engines despite the fact that there already are multiple web gateways around; and it generally does fulfill the intentions of the people using it.

You're treating this like a hypothetical discussion, but we're talking about something that already exists and functions.

And I don't think the "hobby" distinction you're making is particularly relevant, because the whole point of it is again to function as a community of amateurs -- and it's doing that quite effectively.

> because the whole point of it is again to function as a community of amateurs

Looks like I will have to point to the top of the thread again.

If your solution only works for a niche and it can only exist because it is so small that it is only interesting for a handful of people, then it is not an actual solution to the modern web!

That's not up to you to say. If it solves the issues I have with the modern web, it is an actual solution for me. And if changing my browser or installing extensions does nothing to solve the issues I have with the modern web, then that's not even on the table.

A solution that works for a niche... works for that niche. It's not like your solution of switching your browser or installing extensions universally solves anything. I absolutely despise the user experience of Firefox (which you suggested elsewhere) and ads aren't even close to the top of the list of my issues with the modern web.

Once again, what annoys you may or may not annoy me and what annoys me may or may not annoy you.

We are definitely talking about different things.

I'm talking about systemic issues in the modern web. Surveillance Capitalism. The control of mass communication platforms in the hands of a few corporations. The "attention economy" which makes creators more interested in collecting eyeballs than being rewarded by the quality of their work. Cultural homogenization driven by "the algorithm".

This is a lot bigger than "annoyances", and we are not going to solve any of this by acting like it all can be ignored and that all we need is to seek refuge in some ascetic application.

Quoting you:

> Problem: you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work?

Talk about shifting the goalposts! If the idea is to dismantle surveillance capitalism and the attention economy, sure, Gemini won't get us there. But neither will Firefox or browser extensions.

You're talking a major political, societal and cultural revolution here, and for that I don't think "least amount of work" is something to be aiming for.

We vastly underestimate what could be done with a powerful browser. Ad blockers are just the tip of the iceberg.

A powerful browser could work, e.g, as the basis for any type of local-first application and we would solve 98% of the issues of social media networks by letting the browser in control of the functionality. [0] We have web browsers that can let you browse through Tor and we would get rid of data tracking. We can have a "good guy's version" of HolaVPN where people could still cooperate in the data proxying, but without the data selling part. Brave gets a lot of shit because of their crypto stuff, but if more people were seriously looking at their platform as a privacy-preserving opt-in monetization platform, we would be a far better place that we are nowadays.

We can not do any of that with an user agent that can do nothing but fetch and present text documents. We need an actual application platform.

[0]: https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi...

The issues you're talking about (surveillance capitalism, the attention economy) aren’t just browser problems. They're systemic societal and economic forces that go far beyond what a browser can fix. People accept surveillance and attention-hacking in every part of their lives: phones, smart TVs, credit cards, physical store visits. Thinking a better browser setup will meaningfully push back against that feels..... extremely optimistic at best. And that's me being quite charitable in my choice of words.

Also, I think it’s worth noting that you seem to be arguing against points no one here is actually making. Most people in this thread — myself included — aren’t claiming Gemini is a replacement for the entire web, or that it can dismantle surveillance capitalism. We’re just discussing a tool that works well for certain use cases.

As bayindirh pointed out in another reply to you:

> Again for the third and last time: I and other people replying to you didn't say Gemini is a replacement to HTTP. It's a neat little protocol which does some things well and used for some use cases, which happens to my main use cases for the thingy called web. > I have no qualms with your choices with views, but to try to portray your confirmation bias as what I and others say is stuffing words to others' mouth and is an insult to people's intelligence.

A conversation only works when people respond to what’s actually being said — not to imagined arguments. I’d really appreciate it if you could take a step back and engage with the points people are making, rather than framing everyone as advocating for something they’re not.

Why would you need to? The big web existing doesn’t hinder or harm the existence of the tinyweb.

The benefit with A is that it also removes higher order effects of the modern web. You may for example remove adverts by installing an ad blocker, but that wont change the incentives that advertising creates (eg. clickbait, engagement maximizing, etc.). With A you can guarantee that the content is not shaped by these incentives.

> With A you can guarantee that the content is not shaped by these incentives.

Without those incentives, you will quickly find out that there will not be much of an Internet out there.

If you don't believe me, check how many people are on YouTube talking about Open Source, when PeerTube exists and already can reach millions of people.

The internet and web existed for a long time before everything became infested with advertisement: Hobbyist bulletin boards, Wikipedia, the blogosphere, etc. These had enough content that a single person couldn't consume it all in a lifetime.

That internet was also only interesting and valuable to a fraction of the people who use it today.

And if you don't care about that and you are thinking from what you might get out of it: an internet where 99% of the content is crap but universal will end up with more valuable content than a neutered internet that can prevent the emergence of crap, but is tailored to appeal only to 1% of the people.

IOW, no one cares about reading all of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia would never reach the size it has if it was something only for a handful of individuals obsessed about their particular hobbies.

A movie theater where 99% of the movies are crap but universal is less interesting to me than a well curated cinematheque.

What I'm wondering is why do you feel the need to dismiss people's niche interests like this? You've even been rude about it in other answers, calling it "masturbatory".

Not everything has to be for everyone. Not everything has to be for you.

Good. Not everyone has to be invited.

If the global Internet is a train in the 70s, Gemini is meant to be the non-smoking car at the very tail end. Those who cannot tolerate smoking (malicious practices surrounding user attention and agency), then they are free to make their way there and sit with other non-smokers. You won't have as good a conversation as in the smoking cars, but if the smoke really, truly bothers you, it's a space where different cultural rules apply by design.

You may think that way, but to me a more apt analogy is that global Internet are the regular trains of today and Gemini wants to be a bizarre version of the quiet wagons where people can only talk if they don't use the letter "e".

> Without those incentives, you will quickly find out that there will not be much of an Internet out there.

Well, there is plenty of interesting content on Gemini. If you're OK with having 50% fewer needles in order to get rid of 99.999999% of the hay, then it's a win.

The answer is "A". Perhaps some people are avoiding saying this too explicitly because it might sound a bit elitist, but I'll put how I see it as frankly as possible for the sake of clarity.

Gemini is not trying to solve a technical problem with the web. Is trying to solve a cultural problem that arises from the web having become a mass medium, in which every site's focus gradually erodes under pressure to optimize to the lowest common denominator.

Creating a new protocol from the ground up, and requiring users to install a distinct client to access it, isn't just about keeping the software aligned with the project's goals, it's about creating a sufficient threshold of thought and effort for participation that limits the audience to people who are making a deliberate decision to participate. It's about avoiding Eternal September, not about creating a parallel mass-market competitor to the web.

It's not about blocking the annoying ads, popups, and trackers, just to access sites where the content itself is full of spam, scams, political arguments, LLM slop, and other assorted nonsense, and instead creating an ecosystem that's "air-gapped" away from all that stuff, filled with thoughtful content produced deliberately by individuals. It's about collecting needles together away from the hay.

In some ways, A is easier, but not in all ways. Each has its own difficulties.

These are not the only possibilities, though; a third possibility might be:

C) Make a simpler set of features which are compatible with some parts of WWW and implement that.

However, you can do two or all three things if you want to do; you are not limited to doing only one thing. I think all three of these (A, B, C) have their own benefits, so you don't need only one.

I’ve been exploring this problem for a while, and have been building something which I think might help solve it.

I’m currently building a browser-based static site generator that produces clean, simple code. But it does more than that.

Alongside the generated HTML, sites also publish their public configuration and source files, meaning they can be viewed in more than just a browser, for example in a CLI or accessibility device.

The client interface is also more than a CMS - you’ll be able to follow other sites, subscribing to updates, and build a network rather like a webring. The idea is to provide human-powered discovery and community tools. The reach may be less than if algorithmic, but it’s designed for genuine connection, not virality.

As the client is smart but sites are simple, sites can be hosted on anything, from the cheapest shared host up.

I’d be happy to talk further if that’s interesting in any way.

That sounds a bit like the dat browser, no?

Not familiar with dat browser, but I'll take a look.

You can see an early beta of what I'm thinking about here: https://app.sparktype.org/#/sites

In terms of levels of current support, you would be hard-pressed to find anything better for accessibility than simple, well-formed HTML. It's better even than plain text.

HTTP is intermingled with a lot of the shitty SPAs, advertising and SEO of the web. You can make a simple text only site but the noise of the modern web is only ever a couple of clicks away. Gemini silos itself off. You know that a link you click will be an equally clean text-first site. To me that is the feature.

HTTP is great but with AI crawling being all over the place maybe it is not a bad idea to publish in a safe / niche place if one is not obsessed on how much people will be reached.

I am saying this but I have no idea if AI crawlers have started to crawl gem capsules.

> I don’t hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do what it does, but better.

I'm not sure I understand that. HTTP is the fundamental protocol of the web. If your goal is to create an ecosystem that is deliberately set apart from the web, how would using the same underlying tech stack help rather than hinder you in doing that?

> HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it isn’t HTTP’s fault. It’s the sites you visit.

And why are those sites so awful? Did they decide to become awful from the outset, or is it because they've gradually adapted to a userbase that has regressed to the mean due to the mass-market nature of the web?

The whole point of developing a new protocol is to create a non-negligible threshold of though and effort for participation, precisely so that it doesn't get popular quickly and end up subjected to Eternal September.

Though there are any number of nonstandard things you can do over HTTP to restrict your community from the unwashed eternal september noobs from joining it.

Requiring a markdown content-type would probably even be enough.

Consider the fact that TFA is already proxied over HTTP just so more than 3 people will read it, so it seems more sane to be HTTP native.

> Though there are any number of nonstandard things you can do over HTTP to restrict your community from the unwashed eternal september noobs from joining it.

But why would you bother with that, when your whole goal is to create an ecosystem that's separate from the web in the first place?

> Consider the fact that TFA is already proxied over HTTP just so more than 3 people will read it. Seems more sane to be HTTP native.

Podcasts are often rehosted on YouTube, blog content is often reposted to social media, etc. Making content viewable from the other medium without making it native to the other medium is a common practice, and wouldn't defeat the purpose of trying to build a distinct ecosystem on top of the same foundation that underlies the ecosystem you're trying to avoid.

> Podcasts are often rehosted on YouTube

I actually don't know of any other way to get them. I suspect I'm not alone. That's how pervasive the dominant platforms are.

Check the description and the channel's About page. They usually list alternative routes to get the content.

> I actually don't know of any other way to get them.

You can't actually get podcasts per se at all from YouTube. YouTube rehosts podcasts as YouTube channels, and doesn't itself expose podcast feeds.

Lots of people subscribe to podcasts through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, a long tail of various aggregators, or just directly subscribing to podcast feeds in their favorite apps.

My argument is not to use the same stack - just the same transport. No need to reinvent the wheel. HTTP and HTML do not necessitate that you use javascript or images or even forms.

Its a fun concept but the community around it had a strong tendency to want to proselytize their values to you. I enjoyed playing around with it in the beginning but it introduced me to too many tech preachers each with their own similar but slightly different philosophies that they felt like I must know about.

It may have changed but that's what largely turned me off from it. I find other networking projects to have a less preachy mix of people.

The selection effects of people seeking out something like this are probably intense, but that was also true for the early web, and is what people liked about the early web.

> that was also true for the early web, and is what people liked about the early web

Depends. There were parts of the early web that were like this, sure, but there were definitely more, for lack of a better term, "schizo" parts of the early web. I mostly stuck around those parts. A friend I met online got really into some of those intentional community sites and we eventually drifted because it wasn't my thing.

Different networking projects have different cultures though so no skin off my back really. Live and let live and I'm glad the folks who want a community based around anarcho-socialist values have a place to vibe.

I don't remember there being hate. I remember a lot of people, including myself, questioning Gemini's decisions. E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33470229

There were people questioning decisions in relation to goals they were projecting onto the project, but which were not actually the goals of the project. That often resembles 'hate'.

The biggest thing I’ve seen is outsiders who find protocol issues to be non-starters. It’s certainly not a perfect protocol, but neither is HTTP or email. It works and I’m happy that we have another option for hypermedia.

The thing about Gemini is that it reads like someone who thinks Gopher sounds neat but has only ever dealt with HTTP and HTML/Markdown... so they took HTTP GET, chopped a digit off the response codes, and called it a new protocol, then tacked on an intentionally-broken Markdown implementation (more broken than the original Markdown, I mean).

Interesting note: the first line of a Gemini response is a MIME type. It's usually `text/gemini` but there's no reason it can't be `text/html`, `application/javascript`, or anything else. A while back I did a little poking in some Gemini server code and made it do precisely that: serve HTML files which I accessed via elinks. Of course once you're serving HTML over Gemini you might ask, exactly what advantage am I getting by putting it over a purposefully-broken subset of HTTP, and I would say that's a damn good question.

In 2024 I wrote 'The modern Web and all its crappiness didn't come about because there's something inherently wicked in HTML and HTTP, it came about because people built things on top of the basic foundation, extending (sometimes poorly) and expanding. The more people play with Gemini, the more they'll want to "extend" it... and the closer they'll bring it to HTTP, because it follows the exact same fundamental model once you strip off the extraneous document format specification' and I stand by it.

> The more people play with Gemini, the more they'll want to "extend" it... and the closer they'll bring it to HTTP

Then it's not Gemini. Interestingly this is why it was decided for Gemini not to have a protocol version. To prevent extension.

2019: Gemini introduced

2022-ish: Titan created (based on existed of https://web.archive.org/web/20220126075826/https://transjovi...).

The spec for Titan (https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/transjovian.org/titan/page/The...?) appears to be an implementation of PUT for Gemini, but since Gemini doesn't have verbs (GET is implied) it does it by creating a whole new "protocol" titan://

So you're right, they didn't extend the Gemini protocol, they created an entirely new protocol which many clients, servers, and libraries now implement because the functionality was desirable.

Wonder what they'll call the protocol that implements DELETE... maybe Deorbit?

Edit: oh there's also Spartan (2022), another protocol which is Gemini but if there are bytes after the request line, it's an implicit PUT: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michael-lazar/spartan/refs...

Your use of "they" here is misleading. Many, if not most, people in the Gemini community see no need for Titan. The existence of a new protocol doesn’t imply that Gemini is somehow lacking. A Gemini client that doesn’t support Titan is still a fully-featured Gemini client.

Additionally, your description of Spartan is simply incorrect. There are several significant differences between it and Gemini - the most obvious being that Spartan doesn’t use TLS at all!

You're right, I mischaracterized Spartan. Although it is very similar to Gemini, it's not compatible because the author decided even 2-digit response codes were foolish luxury, and as you mentioned there's the TLS thing. Of course, we still call it HTTP even when it transits a TLS connection, but that's not The Gemini Way so...

True minimalists will, of course, use the Mercury protocol: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/floren/mercury/master/SPEC

I wrote a server for it a while back (am still running it someplace behind a CF tunnel) but I’ve never really found either the community or the protocol were taking off:

https://github.com/rcarmo/aiogemini

A key issue with the ecosystem (not the protocol) as far as I’m concerned is that it would have been stupendously better to settle on Markdown (even a simplified form) for content creation. The rest is OK, I guess, but it’s just a nuisance to maintain “dual format” sites.

(I see a few comments here about the community’s opinions and leanings, but to be honest it’s not any weirder than your average old-timely IRC channel or fringe Mastodon server—-live and let live, read what you want and just skip Antenna listings you don’t like)

Being able to parse gemtext line by line with almost no context is a big win for simplicity - you can't really do that with markdown.

It is possible if you restrict yourself to an subset of markdown. It works pretty well, actually, i have two awk scripts that take in a subset of markdown and generate either HTML or LaTeX.

Sure, that's fair! In any case, I personally prefer the aesthetics and the readability of gemtext to markdown (especially when it comes to links!)

Pure ascii text is also a subset of markdown, so it doesn't really say much that it works for a restricted subset.

Uh, how much simplicity do you really gain? What's an instance of needing to backtrack?

You can have "[click me][1]" at the top and then "[1]: https://example.com" at the bottom. You wouldn't be able to render the link until the whole document was downloaded.

It's not like by line but djot was designed to be parsed easier/more efficiently than markdown while being basically as featureful and ergonomic.

Gemini is one of those things I see pop up and tell myself I should look into it more and then it fades into the back of my mind.

Anyone have any hints on getting more use out of it or ways to make it more present in my day to day.

I made the first (and still popular) "social network" 4 years ago. Still going strong. More info: https://martinrue.com/station

it's this federated with anything?

No, it's as simple as it sounds. I should think about that at some point.

This is an interesting project. So the whole thing is hosted at gemini://station.martinrue.com, with no way to host other instances? Stuff like this that leverages the default TLS nature of gemini is pretty exciting. I'm going to have to set up an account later to check it out.

Edit: Checked it out and this is definitely a cool idea. Is there any way to change the unicode emoji next to your name?

https://github.com/dimkr/tootik is another Gemini social network that does federate over ActivityPub, and I've been thinking about developing a minimalist ActivityPub alternative (maybe using Gemini and Titan to replace HTTP GET and POST, respectively) that can coexist with ActivityPub support

That’s brilliant, and exactly the sort of thing that could get me back into Gemini. Nice!

thanks! looks interesting

I love the frugality, overall project goals, and I'm used to non mainstream ergonomics (I enjoy gnu ed..). But something about Gemini search engines and browsing was unfit for me to keep using it.

NewsWaffle gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/

takes a url to a regular webpage and spits out a gemtext version that is much more sparse and, for me, is much more readable.

For example, here's this very website:

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/feed?https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Frss

it's honestly the only reason I still use gemini since the rest of it is abandoned gemlogs, rehosts of web content I don't care or ersatz social media

Oh nice, a gateway in the opposite direction!

There are far more gopher phlogs than gemini gemlogs.

Still, both communities overlap of course.

Setting up a gopher phlog requires no TLS at all and any machine from 1980 (even maybe ITS with a Gopher client written in MacLisp) will be able to read it with no issues.

that's another large chunk of gemini; rehosted gopherholes. Which is silly unless the originals aren't accessible anymore since gopher is already a minimalist protocol

They render better on Smartphones. Lagrange and such do a good job but is not perfect.

Oddly, the best client for Android (albeit clunky) has been Emacs+Elpher as it has the perfect options for word wrapping.

Altough as most Gopher sites are hosted under Unix, running fmt/fold/par on files is a non-issue modulo ASCII ART and inline code with hard requeriments on indentation (TCL for instance on code blocks) or Python.

Perhaps this may help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/geminize/

You will need to prefix a gemini URL with "gem " if you're pasting it into the address bar.

Kristall[1] is my favourite browser, Antenna[2] is my favourite aggregator.

Get browser, read some capsules!

[1]https://kristall.random-projects.net/ [2] gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/

FWIW, I have moved my WEB site to Gemini an decided a little later to mirror it on gopher (for fun).

I find maintaining these 2 sites far easier then dealing with html and the *panels I need to use to upload to my old WEB site.

People who have never viewed Gemini are missing some decent content.

I checked out gemini maybe four years ago? And I remember really liking the idea but struggling to find content. Got any tips?

try gemini://sdf.org/ and gemini://gem.sdf.org/

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/

gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/

Here are a few more:

gemini://calcuode.com/gmisub-aggregate.gmi

gemini://nytpu.com/feed.gmi

gemini://skyjake.fi/lagrange/getting_started.gmi

Some stuff about archives of gemini:// and other SmolNet sites:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/SmolNet

Gemini is a beautiful idea.

However, it works on the basis of mandatory-prohibition. The prohibition is: "You cannot track and exploit your site visitors". This philosophy is enforced 'remotely', by the creators of the Gemini protocol.

An identical end-result can be achieved in HTML, by choosing not to use hostile markup. However, with HTML the prohibition must be enforced 'locally', by the ethical-philosophical position of the website-designer.

The problem with the Gemini-protocol is that it introduces an attack vector: The Gemini 'browsers' themselves. The most popular one is not audited; has a huge code-base; and has relatively few eyes-on-it.

I'm not saying that Gemini protocol is a honey-trap for those trying to exit the surveillance-internet; but if I was a tech-giant / agency profiting from the surveillance-internet, I would definitely write browsers for the Gemini protocol and backdoor them.

As a former "Don't be evil" company, it would be of great interest to me who was trying to exit my 'web'; how; and why :)

Food for thought...

> You cannot track and exploit your site visitors

Despite the specification, there is such possibilities as TLS fingerprinting, URL tracking, although it does reduce much of the problems of WWW.

> The problem with the Gemini-protocol is that it introduces an attack vector: The Gemini 'browsers' themselves. The most popular one is not audited; has a huge code-base; and has relatively few eyes-on-it.

You do not have to use the most popular one (I don't use the most popular one); there are many others available as well, and the specification is made that you could hopefully make your own one if you like to do, too.

> if I was a tech-giant / agency profiting from the surveillance-internet, I would definitely write browsers for the Gemini protocol and backdoor them.

Nobody is required to use that specific implementation, and someone might find the backdoors, but it is possible.

> As a former "Don't be evil" company, it would be of great interest to me who was trying to exit my 'web'; how; and why :)

You do not necessarily need to write a new browser to check this; sometimes they already write public documents about these things, and there are many other ways to track it (e.g. by logging other things, by tracking browser extensions, etc).

the userbase for gemini is so miniscule, I can't imagine they could get enough data to want to even bother. Bit like trophy fishing in the puddle of rain runoff next to the stocked pond of monster bass.

The whole point of Gemini's simplicity and designed-in lack of evolution (through missing version numbers) is that you can write a fully featured client yourself, because the protocol surface is not that large once you leverage an existing TLS library.

Gemini for me has been such a breath of fresh air in contrast to 2025 Internet, with so many ads, grift and now AI slop.

Back when I first discovered Gemini, I wanted to create a space for people to have a voice without needing to run their own server, so I built Station (https://martinrue.com/station). I've been running it ever since.

Gemini in general, and specifically folk who use Station regularly, make it a friendly, throwback-to-the-90s vibe, and I still value it a lot.

Gemini the protocol is still a bit mysterious to me. Why not use plain HTTPS and just serve a new text/x.gemini MIME type? Or even serve plain old text/html and enforce no-JS-or-CSS in the Gemini client.

Part of the goals of making it so tiny, as far as I understand it, is that a normal person could reasonably implement the entire thing from server to client. Going full HTTPS and HTML is a bit of a lift for a single person in a short period of time

Because then it would be using HTTPS, and would not be isolated from the web in the way Gemini intends.

I like Gemini. My (anonymous) blog (gemlog) is posted there and has an http proxy, and is a no-brainer to maintain.

Once in a while I check Lagrange (Gemini "browser") for gemlogs I've subscribed to and catch up with what other anons are going through. It tends to be a lot more raw and persona-less than what I find on the web, which I appreciate. It's generally just cozy.

Does gemini have any concept of feeds or pub/sub?

I noted there were a few capsules that acted as a sort of hub for other peoples capsules. which suggested to me there was a way to automate it, and I might be able to make my own

Are SpaceWalk [1] or Moku Pona[2] what you're looking for?

1. https://tildegit.org/sloum/spacewalk

2. https://github.com/kensanata/moku-pona

These are some feeds and aggregators I have bookmarked

gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/view.gmi

gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/

gemini://calcuode.com/gmisub-aggregate.gmi

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/

gemini://tinylogs.gmi.bacardi55.io/

gemini://sl1200.dystopic.world/juntaletras.gmi

Does gemini have any concept of feeds or pub/sub?

Yes: https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/companion/subscription.gmi

Many clients, including my favorite, Lagrange (https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/) support feed subscriptions.

I love the idea, but it's just to fringe to use for me. But I will say that I think the internet was far better before Google search really became strong, and before the corresponding massive increase in SEO spam.

"1.1.1 The dense, jargony answer for geeks in a hurry

Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files"

If I were one, I would consider that to have been buried.

This is just somebody's "finished" pet protocol (author did not allow anybody to give input). Narcissism we should not enable.

I will stick to gopher, as it is mature and much friendlier to low spec / retro machines.

That's not narcissism - it's just someone building something they enjoy and sharing it with the world. Do you have the same objections to fiction writers or songwriters?

It's totally fine to prefer gopher for its maturity (I'd vehemently disagree, but that's for another day) or compatibility with retro machines, but framing someone else's creative project as a character flaw is just rude.

The author very much did allow others to give input. The original protocol had single digit status codes, I was arguing for three digit codes, he compromised with two digit codes. It was my idea to include the full URL for requests, and for redirections. It's just that it wasn't easy, but he could be reasoned with. The only two hard lines Solderpunk had for the protocol was TLS, and single level lists (why, I don't know).

Gopher user there from texto-plano (and seldomly, SDF).

Gopher often sucks for 40x25 devices or mobile ones. Yes, word wrapping, but everyone uses the 72 char limit or even doesn't give a heck and I have to set my own $PAGER calling fmt, fold or par before less.

On TLS, you are right. But I've got to build BearSSL and some libreSSL for for Damn Small Linux. The 2.4 kernel one, were ALSA was a novely and DMIX was hard to set, the one you got with Debian Woody... with the bf24 at the LILO prompt.

So, if DSL can run some BearSSL based OpenSSL-lite client, a gemini client for it should be totally doable.

One issue I have with BearSSL is that it does not currently implement TLS 1.3, as far as I can tell.

I think Gemini is a step in the right direction for some things. I usually mention my "tersenet" ideas when I see Gemini. Now that we have the Gemini LLM and Claude etc. there is less excuse for me to not finish any real software demo for it. Maybe one these days I will make an actual client for part of it.

I think there is room for things like media and applications even on an idealized web. But they should not necessarily be combined along with information browsing and search into one thing.

https://github.com/runvnc/tersenet

> I think Gemini is a step in the right direction for some things.

I also think so, although I have criticisms of it too (e.g. mandatory TLS; I think optional (except files that require authentication for access) would be better), but nevertheless it can be used.

> I usually mention my "tersenet" ideas when I see Gemini

I have seen TerseNet, and I mentioned it in my "small web" document. I think it is good that media and programs are not loaded automatically, although there are other problems with TerseNet in my opinion, such as text being limited to 5K.

> I think there is room for things like media and applications even on an idealized web. But they should not necessarily be combined along with information browsing and search into one thing.

I agree, it is helpful, and they should be separated.

I also made up a protocol and file format specification, in order to deal with the criticisms of the other ones. In addition to avoiding many things, there is also adding things which would be useful, beyond what WWW and others might do. So, it is not strictly a subset of the functions of WWW, even though many things are deliberately avoided.

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