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2021-02-07
I don't particularly like the way BigTech has taken over, hence my recent moves towards the decentralized & federated social sites. In my opinion the "big" social sites of Faccebook, Instagram etc have had their day. It's so old school. Our data is our data. Right?
There is room for alternatives that are open and transparent and don't sell our data to the highest bidder. Decentralised and Federated social networks are the future. I've had good experiences with MeWe (better than Facebook) and Mastodon (similar to Twitter).
You can hook up with me on
El Perro Negro's Kennel (Gemini Capsule)
Mastodon User:@elperronegro@mastodon.social
Messaging systems are changing too. People in their hundreds of thousands are leaving Facebook Messenger & WhatsApp. They are heading for more privacy and arguably a better user experience on Signal or Telegram.
Come on people, break free of the chains that have taken you over!
In the last few days I have been particularly looking at "Project Gemini". Now this is a really interesting new development.
From the Project Gemini own website
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html
I have really come to hate the World Wide Web. It is bloated! Websites themselves are doubling in size at an alarming rate. They track you, they fool you, they can even infect your computer. And, web standards are expanding at an alarming rate. It's broken.
Gemini is a new (the project started in June 2019) application-level internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between files. You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence". Gemini may be of interest to people who are:
Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while keeping its weight within acceptable limits. Gemini is also intended to be very privacy conscious, to be difficult to extend in the future (so that it will stay simple and privacy conscious), and to be compatible with a "do it yourself" computing ethos.
In short, Gemini takes you back to the simple days of the early web. It simplifies everything. Compare it to reading a good old fashioned book instead of a glossy magazine full of ads.
It has only just started as I only discovered it a few days ago! I have already written a few blogs (GMI files) using a free online Gemini hosting service. I like it. It's fast, simple and easy to get text onto the internet. As I have been using Markdown as a text writing service for a few years and Gemini uses a very basic, simplified form of Markdown, producing a page was easy. Much, much easier than writing HTML documents.
Today I took a step forward however by setting up my own Gemini Server on a Digital Ocean Droplet. Although I have used linux as my main desktop for 10+ years now, and am used to the command line, it was made much easier by the wonderful video by Chris Were Digital
How to install and set-up a gemini server
I now have my own Gemini Server running. Creating text documents is easy. Uploading to the Server is also quick and simple using SFTP connections. For those of you able to view GMI files in a browser my site is at gemini://elperronegro.com