619
The internet is worse than it used to be. How did we get here, and can we go back?
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
619 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59257 readers
4713 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
TIL - there is something called Gopher and Gemini. Looks interesting, will read more on it.
Neither is all that great in practice.
Gopher has many problems as a protocol. The original versions of HTTP had much the same problems, such as closing the connection at the end of a transfer rather than having a length header or a signal that the connection is actually done. HTTP went on to fix most of those problems, but Gopher never got the chance. Gopher+ started fixing it up, but it was a victim of bad timing. The Mosaic browser was released shortly after Gopher+ and everyone started switching over. To my knowledge, nobody has ever implemented Gopher+ on either a client or server. Not even after over 20 years of a "revival" movement.
Gemini intentionally limits things, such as not having inline images. This is supposed to be done to keep out methods that have been historically used to track users, but things don't work that way. I can just as easily send my logs to a data broker without using a pixel tracker if that's what I want to do.
In the end, you can just use HTTP with a static web page, zero cookies, and no JavaScript. That's what I ended up doing for my old blog (after offering a Gemini version for a while), including converting a bunch of YouTube
<iframe>tags to linked screenshots so you don't even get YouTube cookies.That's been my take on the whole 'use gopher/gemini!' bandwagon. Nice idea, but the solution to the problem leads to more problems that need solutions, and we've come up with solutions to those, but on other protocols.
And I mean, if I stab someone in the face with a screwdriver, the misuse of the screwdriver isn't in some way specific to the screwdriver and thus nobody should use screwdrivers.
Same thing with all the nonsense a modern website does: HTTP is fine, it's just being used by shitheads. You could make a prviacy-respecting website that's not tracking you or engaging in any sort of shifty bullshit, but someone at some point decided that was the only way to make money on the Internet, and here we are.
Fyi, there’s a portal site: gemini://medusae.space/
(http version if you’re not on gemini yet)
https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/medusae.space/