💾 Archived View for yujiri.xyz › gemini.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 23:36:56. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Now that I'm migrating my website to Gemini, it behooves me to write my own advocacy piece for the new protocol. Migrating an existing website with this much content and making the web version of it a second-class citizen certainly requires a lot of justification. I'll try to write this for non-technical readers.
Gemini is an alternative to the web: a system for publishing content on the internet where pages can "link" to other pages.
Specifically Gemini is an alternative to HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), the protocol that web browsers use to communicate with websites and download pages. It also comes with an alternative to the document format used by HTTP, HTML (HyperText Markup Language); the Gemini document format is called Gemtext.
Right now you're viewing my site through a *proxy* which gets a Gemtext document from my Gemini server, translates it into an HTML document, and serves it to your web browser over HTTP. I set up this proxy on my server so people who haven't heard of Gemini yet could still read my site.
Now it's time to discuss why I want to replace the web with Gemini.
I have a separate article explaining why I hate the web:
In summmary: the spyware, the ads, the bloat and the broken pages, the data and battery drain, even the corporate control, are a direct result of the fundamental design of the web protocols (HTTP, HTML, and the other things involved). These problems can't be solved by a social or political movement; we must replace the fundamental web protocols. That's what Gemini is.
Gemini and Gemtext are designed from scratch to prevent all of this. To keep power in the hands of the users. As you might've picked up, it has a lot fewer features than the web, and this makes it really hard to persuade people to adopt it, but if you're willing to approach it with an open mind, you'll find that most of the removed features are not just unnecessary but harmful by their very presence. Without them it's impossible to track users or fill their screens with ads, and the content is much easier to read.
If you want to see Gemini without the HTTP proxy, you can install a Gemini browser for any operating system, such as Lagrange (works on Windows, Mac, and Linux).
You can learn more about Gemini here:
https://gemini.circumlunar.space
Thanks for listening to me!