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Re: "The small Net is just not there yet.... (small aka smol..."
Hey, give us time, we're building it. I, for one, am working on html + css website on my own serverm, which is good enough for my needs and simple enough for my abilities.
2023-12-22 · 3 months ago
1. Let's identify barreers for entry
2. Let's address those barreers
👻 mediocregopher [...] · Dec 22 at 17:11:
@Bazmatazable Sorry, I hadn't meant to attack any of your work personally, instead I was answering your question:
So why then are we living in a world where organisers of a tiny amateur regular event don't organise their community using a website but try to manage events manually using several social media groups and messaging platforms instead?
It's great that you're able to overcome the obstacles involved, but for these people at this community event the obstacles were obviously too high, and there's no apparent reason they should try to navigate them anyway.
🚀 Bazmatazable [OP] · Dec 22 at 17:34:
@mediocregopher hahha yes I did ask that so fair enough you are just responding to my question. I had hoped that my question would "tee up" the rest of my post so that I could answer myself (did you see? i even added a graph!). You are technically correct, the best kind of correct!
🦉 ResetReboot · Dec 22 at 18:06:
@xavi I think that the point is not "intelligent people" as the barrier for entry into Gemini, but more the "you gotta put in the work to be part of it".
When you have to put in the work, you have a real interest into getting into this part of the Internet. That reduces bored people that only want to be a nuisance: If they have to put some work into entering the place, they will default to easier places to enter and leave us alone.
That's what convenience has brought upon too: When everything is *too easy* people don't value what they get.
Anyone following a tutorial can become active part of Gemini, it is not a matter of intelligence or elitism. Put in the damn work.
🚀 Minko_Ikana · Dec 22 at 18:08:
Something I found I liked about Zeronet is the client/server package which included the server as an option to activate and the ability to just clone an existing site you like and then customize it how you like to make it your own.
🚀 Bazmatazable [OP] · Dec 22 at 18:28:
It seems that we don't all agree on the "small" in smallnet. According to Aral Balkan:
Small Technology is everyday tools for everyday people designed to increase human welfare, not corporate profits.
Or are we saying that everyday people are not invited if they can't show some proof of work?
I just assumed that everyone is invited but businesses interested in monetizing our attention are not. Did I get that wrong?
🚀 Bazmatazable [OP] · Dec 23 at 03:20:
I became initially interested in Gemini when I read this:
A small but growing community of people were embracing the nearly 30 year old Gopher protocol as a kind of respite from what they perceived as an increasingly commercialised, centralised, resource-hungry, privacy-invading and user-hostile web.
and this:
If you wish that browsing the web felt more like browsing a library than wandering through a shopping mall or a casino, Gemini could be right up your alley.
Turns out the whole project is a kind of a convoluted captcha to keep lazy idiots out. Why not just implement something like this instead?
— https://www.defectiveyeti.com/iacaptchas/
🚀 Minko_Ikana · Dec 23 at 12:39:
@Bazmatazable, Those words are what brought me to try it too. Why even share that welcome mat if no one actually wants the door to be opened? A disclamer that it is a private Dev club and members will have to pay dues might be more fitting.
🚀 Bazmatazable [OP] · Dec 23 at 13:32:
@Minko_Ikana I didn't get involved with Gemini because I thought it was a private club. I thought it was a response to capitalist desire for profit crushing humanity's desire to be human. (For the record: my original post is unrelated to the Gemini project.)
If wanting choices other than those dictated by Big Tech counts as elitism, then people are going to have to worry less about how strangers label them.
🚀 Bazmatazable [OP] · Dec 24 at 04:47:
Wanting choices other than those dictated by Big Tech doesn't count as elitism.
Making an elite club with a barrier to entry is elitism. (Also looking down on people outside of your elite club is elitism)
I don't know why I feel compelled to say something that we all probably know already. I guess I am not feeling heard or understood.
It seems to follow from @Bazmatazable 's comment that unless choices of software involve equal effort, then all but one of them involve elitism. It's not clear whether it's proposed to weigh this consideration against other factors.
👻 shikitohno · Dec 25 at 03:27:
I don't think requiring people make some small effort to participate in a community is elitist. There is no great monetary commitment necessary to participate in the small web, but there is an expectation to take the time to familiarize oneself with the rules and culture once inside. I don't see this as any more onerous a burden than expecting quiet in a library, or other spaces with behavioural standards in place.
Heck, there are step-by-step guides to installing a gemini browser or even setting up a server that you can, quite literally, copy and paste and be off to the races. Barring those who need some sort of accessability software not yet available here, I find this exclusion somewhat self-selecting.
🚀 anti_social · Dec 25 at 06:51:
Nice effortpost. The small web has a long way to go before it can compete with the big boys. Unlike some here, I believe that it should be so ambitious. As for elitism, there's nothing wrong with it. If you can't figure out how to install Lagrange and type in Gemtext, perhaps you deserve to be enslaved by Mark Zuckerberg. Certainly that's your destiny. What, you're telling me lazy fools grown fat off the excess of capitalist exploitation of the planet don't get to one-click their way to a meet-and-greet?Making the small web better is like saving souls. But not everyone can be saved. Most people are destined for Hell because they are demons.
🚀 Minko_Ikana · Dec 25 at 11:30:
This conversation so far has me completely confused. Are two different definitions and perspectives of "elitism" being discussed past each other here?
Please let me share what attracted me to Gemini and why I am here researching it. The clearweb is becoming a place where everything is monitored, controlled, and censored. They are inside our machines and browsers with 3rd party APIs. There is no such thing as personal privacy and freedom of speech anymore.
We own a free speech forum and community that is behind closed doors and private. But even at that we are already having the government trying to gain access through our server host. They are threatening our ICANN domain name renewal if we do not open our backdoor to their overlord violation of privacy and control.
So for a year now I have been on a quest to try and incorporate a more personal and private protocol for our community to keep in touch as this government control issue becomes even worse very soon. The whole normal web is becoming just like the Chinese model of control, censorship and lack of freedom & privacy.
It is going to ruin the intenet very soon. It will be nothing but a commercial market place with total control over personal freedom of speech and ideology. And if freedom costs a little extra personal time and effort to make a protocol like Gemini to work then so be it. It is expected and worth it.
Obviously the most logical direction is secure, encrypted, and private P2P protocols where centralization is not required. The only control point is one's local ISP gateway. All they can do is flip the switch at access. Internet providers and Ecommerce are going to fight tooth and nail to prevent this.
So the time has come for P2P to become a highly prized and useful tool and protocol for individual freedom from overlords, cultural political correctness, and social engineering. But when I read perspectives like this it makes me think that maybe even P2P protocols can't save us from ideological slavery:
"but there is an expectation to take the time to familiarize oneself with the rules and culture once inside. I don't see this as any more onerous a burden than expecting quiet in a library, or other spaces with behavioural standards in place."
If P2P smallweb is universally expected to be the very same controlled and censored politically correct environment then why encrypt it? Why try to make it private? Without freedom of speech and lack of persecution from the masses then what is the advantage and why even consider doing the work to use it?
I'm not talking about the individual personal servers like this BBS, each absolutely does have the personal right to control what happens on their server. But to say the whole protocol in general should be just as controlled and censored as the normal net is becoming then I am wasting my time with it.
It is self defeating and never going to grow as a protocol if this is the case. Could be why it has not grown and spread already. If the object is to keep people from using it except for priviledged "politically correct" individuals then these seniments I am reading here are going to do a good job of doing this.
Every group of people has standards of behavior. I don't think that the quote is calling for control or censorship. It is not censorious or controling to stop assosciating with people that do not meet your personal basic standards for conduct, similar to how a librarian asking you to be quiet is not censorious. It is okay to set expectations for people, it's usually the only way to get them to meet them.
i do not believe in low barriers. but i believe that the solution is education.
we failed computer education because it is a new field. but we will improve it.
secondly, privacy and/or security means unconveniences. you have the door? then you need to lock it, remember where your keys are, etc. life is hard.
people who are unable to use something more 'complex' than whatsapp are doing very complex tasks in other areas. there is no reason they cannot use jabber.
jabber and freedom means choices: choose a server to open account on, then username, then client, then add friends manually.
but that is not hard for a liturate people.
and it doesnt five spof company all your data.
The small Net is just not there yet.... (small aka smol aka indie) (net aka internet aka web) TLDR; I want the small internet to thrive but after seeing how most people use the internet I don't see how it is even possible at all. Big platforms give their users powerful tools, easy interfaces, and massive reach with no barriers. The small internet has to have a lower barrier to entry than starting a Whatsapp group in order for there to be any meaningful change in our online spaces. The...