With surveillance capitalism reaching it’s peak in 2026/2027, is getting out the Web the only way for the privacy inclined user?
Will Gemini (or cousins) go the way of Linux? Or is it foverer condemned to go the way of Hurd
I’ve checked out Gemini a couple of times and find it a fun project.
In my opinion though, we gain more by participating in the wider web. There are a plethora of small web websites out there - it’s only difficult to find them. Blogrolls/blogrings and dedicated search engines like Marginalia help with this.
This also lets everyone have a more granular definition of what’s important to them: lack of javascript, minimal page size, lack of styling, full-text RSS feeds, compatibility with text-mode browsers etc. Everyone can pick and choose what they value without having to hash out agreement over the spec.
I loved their note:
Note: This article is about Gemini, the HTTP-like Internet protocol for document browsing, and not the large language model or the cryptocurrency of the same name. Nor it is about astrology.
The idea sounds interesting. I’m not against trying new things, but it seems kinda dead in the water?
For me forums were big part of my Internet history - but it is history. I’m not sure many people would choose to go back…This is not about nostalgia but to fight against surveillance weaponization and commoditification of what was once a tool for knowledge sharing. The old internet of bulletin boards and irc was essentially human, this thing we have now is something else. Did you chuckle at that chunck of text and not get where the author (as many of us) was standing from?
It feels like the good old Ivory Tower. “The let’s lock ourselves in!” mentality never worked in changing the world for a beter place.
I’m not saying having principles and standing against slop/spyware/privacy nightmare is bad. But it feels a bit off to me.
I wish the best, and I want the best for the future.“Lock ourselves in?” We want to overthrow the current state of affairs.
Ok, I’ve found out a liberal on Lemmy.ml. 🤦♂️
I don’t understand the second part of your comment.
If you want to make something better you think insulting others will do it?A ‘new’ protocol that won’t have much chance to be inseminated into the general population just means those projects will separate the idealist groups into smaller groups. Who would probably have more chance working together against the big system.
Hence locking yourself in the tower.Edit: typo
Honestly, I expect Gemini to remain a niche thing pretty much forever.
It does not offer what a regular user wants: a convenient, interactive, extensible, multipurpose Web. For most, it’s incredibly boring and outdated. Even worse that it requires its own browser or translation through the local server.
At the same time, a lot of its advantages are specifically due to low adoption. What makes it more free and people-centric, for example, is exactly that barely anyone knows of its existence. Nothing stops one from infesting it much the same way regular Web is.
What would be curious, though, is the interaction between the concepts of this project and projects like Reticulum. We may need to develop alternative means of communication, including low-bandwith channels like LoRa, and for that, simple text-based sites are perfect.
LoRa is proprietary. Shit would be as broken as FOSS in ARM and mobile. (Fuck Qualcomm!)
It sucks that google changed its chatbot name from bard to gemini and drowned this cool project out in the process. It’s a beautiful simple thing, and feels like the internet as it once was and should partially remain.
I don’t know, this blog posts reads like “I hate everything that makes Gemini Gemini (unable to commercialize, limited gemtext capabilities, TOFU and TLS) , but I actually do like it.”
sourcehut hosts it free and makes publishing dead simple. You just push a tarball, and Bob’s your mother’s brother.
