Comment by Gormo
4 months ago
> 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.
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