Comment by bayindirh
4 months ago
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.
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