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Gemini is Solutionism

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Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#111

Post by foxfluff »

CookieMon wrote: post #102
duxup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about the web when I came along with was all the character, good, bad or otherwise that personal sites, even some corporate sites that people build had. GeoCities came along and things could be ugly, but it felt genuine. Even just background choices or ugly gifs… I miss the personal wonkiness and folks not afraid to make ugly sites. The race to ultra minimalism feels as cold as a Facebook profile, may…

https://search.marginalia.nu/ made the interesting observation that a big chunk of that amateur OG internet never stopped or went away, Google etc. just stopped linking to it and it went invisible.

Without numbers, it's hard to say how much of it is left. However, I do believe that a big chunk left and mere tiny bits of it are left. And of course, archives of old and now dead things..

The vast majority of people on the internet are not ever exposed to that kind of web (and most of those who were have moved on). How does someone even find out such a thing exists? How does someone figure out how to participate, if their entire web experience comes from facebook-twitter-youtube-instagram era?

In the 90s, the original amateur internet was something you'd be inevitably exposed to if you did anything at all on the web. Geocities was a thing, ISPs often offered free space for hosting personal home pages. I saw normies, total non-geeks make personal home pages because that's just the kind of thing people found on the web and wanted to try. My older sister had her own homepage. She's not a programmer and not a geek. Her site was a part of some webring, linking other sites made by teenage girls..

"Social media" was forums, likewise hosted by individuals, often in conjunction with their personal home pages, linking to other such sites...

I think the vast majority of it is simply gone.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#112

Post by bawolff »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #101

"Why couldn't one simply build on top of existing HTTP infrastructure, throw away all the baggage and instead implement a new Content-Type, which existing browsers then could parse?" Because escaping the annoyances of the "modern web" may require escaping from the "modern browser". The changes users want to "modern browsers" will never be made. The vendors of these programs do not answer to users. They answer to web…

> Not the type of simpler pages that some users want.

And yet most of these users don't use lynx...

> Only complaint I have about Gemini is the absolute requirement for SNI. Not every IP addresss will necessarily be hosting multiple Gemini sites. Under the current protocol, even addresses hosting only a single site must require SNI. That makes no sense.

If you're only hosting 1 site, isn't the privacy leak negligible because there is 1:1 mapping from ip to domain so an attacker caneasily determine it.

Besides, in a system playing fast and loose with pki, its more like a do not disturb sign than an actual lock.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#113

Post by lmm »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #109
lmm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's easy to set up on Windows. I can toggle English and Japanese input with Windows Key + Space. It's virtually impossible to set it up if you don't use a QWERTY layout. I have a horrible pile of hacks that more or less work for now, but are being removed in windows 11.

Interesting! I had never tried. Do you know if the Google IME has the same issue?

No idea, I've never used a Google OS on a machine with a real keyboard.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#114

Post by foxfluff »

> Bottom line is, if you agree that the modern web has become an awful place, let’s work on changing that for everyone, instead of abandoning it like a bunch of billionaires trying to escape to a different place, before this one collapses.

The implication being that the web can be changed? I don't believe that, I believe the web is broken and it's only getting worse by the day. I'm not going to discourage you from trying though.

> If you don’t like how modern websites track their users and flood them with ads, then don’t do that on your website [..]

> If you don’t like JavaScript, don’t use it [..]

Sorry, these are not answers for me as a user. When I browse the gemini space, I'm guaranteed to not be flooded with ads, harmful javascript, etcetra. And I'm also guaranteed not to have to play whack-a-mole with ublock/umatrix trying to make the actual fucking content somehow load. That's where the value is! "In theory, someone could make a nice website. Some actually do" is nice but it does nothing for my browsing experience in general, because the next link is going to be crap again.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#115

Post by GoblinSlayer »

bscphil wrote: post #86
square_usual wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, it would be really nice to have back a Web where clicking a link couldn't result in loading a page that's tracking your mouse movements while you're on it. It's still possible if you use uBlock, or enable JS only when you need it. You don't have to throw the baby (gemtext missing inline links !) out with the bathwater.

I think abut it kind of like this (as someone who has never used Gemini): There are all sorts of uses for cryptographic proofs; e.g. you can sign a document and prove that you were the one who signed it, or you can do a bunch of double-SHA hashes and prove ownership of a Bitcoin, you can prove via a SSL certificate that the content that claims to come from somedomain.example actually does, etc etc. But there's no way…

Authors of Gemini admit scripts and tracking is possible on Gemini, just not implemented yet, like it wasn't implemented in Mosaic.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#116

Post by lonecom »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #101

"Why couldn't one simply build on top of existing HTTP infrastructure, throw away all the baggage and instead implement a new Content-Type, which existing browsers then could parse?" Because escaping the annoyances of the "modern web" may require escaping from the "modern browser". The changes users want to "modern browsers" will never be made. The vendors of these programs do not answer to users. They answer to web…

>A Gemini browser cabal where users have only a few choices and they are each controlled by corporations is unlikely.

This is the key point. It is like the idea that you don't need the fastest person to escape from a chasing bear, you only need to be faster than the slowest person.

A user on the conventional web, is the slowest person here. And thus the success of Gemini browser is dependent on the existence of the slower person, that is, a large number of users available for exploitation, on the regular web, so that the business will leave the Gemini users (and the likes) alone.

HN actually implements this idea by remaining minimal. But even this place got overrun by shills these days, which means such piecemeal strategies will not work. So it makes perfect sense to do all the way and use a different protocol altogether..

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#117

Post by foxfluff »

bawolff wrote: post #110

Gemini is so silly. The logic is basically as follows: - people are using web features in a way we don't like. They could do it in the way we like but that's unpopular. - instead lets make it impossible to do things that we don't like in our system. But people have to voluntarily use our system. For some reason people will use gemini voluntarily even though they refused to voluntarily use the web in a way we approve…

- People are using web features in a way we don't like. They could do it in the way we like but that's unpopular. Some do but it's impossible to divine it ahead of time before you follow a link and see what horrors lie behind.

- Instead let's make it impossible to do things that we don't like in our system. People have to voluntarily use our system. By virtue of having their content in our system, our users are guaranteed a comfortable experience.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#118

Post by Planktonne »

adamrezich wrote: post #12
barakm wrote: post #3

You’re entirely right; the sole reason for Gemini is to exclude people. It’s more than solutionism, it’s elitism. It’s some people hiding their content to the quote-unquote “cool” kids and claiming it’s a “better” solution just because the primary clients are terminal based. Which is why nothing of value is lost by ignoring it, IMO.

> It’s more than solutionism, it’s elitism. > elitism (n.) the advocacy or existence of an elite as a dominating element in a system or society. where does this idea come from? why can't people make their own spaces in their own corners of the Internet without being considered "elitist?" is HN "elitist"? 4chan? Usenet? ZeroNet?

> is HN "elitist"? 4chan? Usenet? ZeroNet?

Yes; very much so, particularly those first two which are widely known for it.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#119

Post by CookieMon »

lonecom wrote: post #116
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #101

"Why couldn't one simply build on top of existing HTTP infrastructure, throw away all the baggage and instead implement a new Content-Type, which existing browsers then could parse?" Because escaping the annoyances of the "modern web" may require escaping from the "modern browser". The changes users want to "modern browsers" will never be made. The vendors of these programs do not answer to users. They answer to web…

>A Gemini browser cabal where users have only a few choices and they are each controlled by corporations is unlikely. This is the key point. It is like the idea that you don't need the fastest person to escape from a chasing bear, you only need to be faster than the slowest person. A user on the conventional web, is the slowest person here. And thus the success of Gemini browser is dependent on the existence of the s…

Many 'rules' (like one request -> one file) create limitations in Gemini that prevent it from being capable of web-style corporate behaviour, so even if business isn't content with regular web users and doesn't leave Gemini users alone, their options and the damage they can do is hampered (unless co-opting the entire movement).

I think the protocol being designed around ensuring it's difficult for sites to exploit visitors is a core goal that gets lost in the blinding document minimalism that's hits you when first encountering Gemini, OP didn't seem to get it.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#120

Post by piaste »

akkartik wrote: post #23

I'm not yet sure how I feel about Gemini (I like inline links), but this post makes me think it's starting to gain some traction. It's past the "first they ignore it" and "then they laugh at it" phases and now into the "then they fight it" phase. Given that the mainstream stack we all are dependent on has foundational problems as OP acknowledges, language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive. Sure…

> So why not let a thousand flowers bloom?

That's... probably a poor figure of speech to use as encouragement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

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