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Beyond the sliver of early adopters and enthusiasts who are drawn to Gemini for experimental- or ideological reasons, what practical value could Gemini offer the average internet user?
Can we come up with something tangible and non-ideological that can actually be felt by the user, to the point where it would give them a reason to use Gemini over other platforms?
The one argument that I can think of is that Gemini offers respite from the monopolization of the internet, and the subsequent hyperoptimization for engagement and ad dollars.
Anyone got additional observations?
Nov 26 · 3 weeks ago
☯️ dragfyre · Nov 26 at 00:47:
we're very critical in here already.
Why would we want to attract anyone?
This kind of reasoning really bugs me. Anyone who likes it here is happy. If there is not enough here for you, get whatever you need elsewhere.
This is not a corporation that needs to grow users or profit.
😎 bababooey [OP/mod] · Nov 26 at 02:10:
Why would we want to attract anyone?
Why wouldn't we?
🐑 thezipcreator · Nov 26 at 02:51:
I don't think gemini is /for/ the average internet user. that's why it exists in the first place.
why wouldn't we? I am here because I don't like it there, where someone had accomplished just that.
I'd prefer Gemini adoption stay at about the size it's at now. Some folks leave, some folks join, maybe a little bit of growth or a little bit of loss here and there. "Critical Mass" gives me "Hackernews VC vibes from so called 'Technology Thought Leaders'". The bigger the audience gets, the more likely crappy commercial crap content will flood the space.
My position is to have geminispace be welcoming enough to newcomers and average folks without pushing for them to come here. Feel free to stop on over and have fun, but don't feel compelled to stay.
The problem with this is similar to the problem with advertising your business.
All that happens when you advertise a business is you bring in the kinds of people who respond to advertisements. Who wants that headache unless you owe someone money and have no choice?
Make good stuff available only here and people will eventually find it and tell their friends. That’s it.
Hey, I like to walk in the backstreet of a city. It follows the main street but there is a lot less people and no ads and business. Hey let's make the backstreet as atractive as the mainstreet with business and ads! There are reasons why we move underground, it's not to invite the whole world in here.
the gentrification of Gemini!
😎 bababooey [OP/mod] · Nov 26 at 07:13:
This is not a corporation that needs to grow users or profit.
All that happens when you advertise a business is you bring in the kinds of people who respond to advertisements.
Hey let's make the backstreet as atractive as the mainstreet with business and ads!
the gentrification of Gemini!
Trying to quantify what tangible utility that Gemini can have for someone who isn't using it for philosophical reasons isn't the same thing as commercializing- or advertising it.
Heheh, for sure, I was pulling your leg there a bit. Gemini and gopher are really light protocols that work really well on slow network for one thing. It would also be easy to create semi 'private' network by not advertising anywhere you server so only a small group of people could use it. It's also more focus on human to human interaction, instead of business to human. It's fairly empty of AI generated content. With tools like lagrange it's simple to get started. It's a great step into simplifying your digital life while still feeling somewhat connected. I personally like to write on gopher as its a way to share yet not to millions of people, but a smaller audience...
@bababooey
I do feel you were treated a bit unfairly here. Please understand that people are reacting to their own idea of what you meant and not *necessarily* to your actual point.
To answer your question, I would say that more and better things to read is the number one thing which would bring more people to gemini. Gemlogs are really the soul of Gemini, they are what it is for more than anything else, and it does them very very well.
Having a greater number of writers who write consistently and are known to people on the web but publish some or most things only on Gemini would bring many more people to Gemini.
Whether that's a good thing or not is absolutely up for debate.
I don’t think the Gemini as protocol/markup has features which would interest a mainstream user. Traits such as: lightweight, simple, free-of-corporate-monopoly are not advantages from the mainstream user’s point of view. This is just my observation and I could be completely wrong, but if those features were generally desired, retro-computers and OpenBSD would be more popular topic than latest GPUs and ultra-large-LLMs…
More content on mainstream topics (AAA gaming, world news, politics) would probably help a bit, if someone want to increase amount of such users on Gemini. But why? Quantity ≠ Quality. Filling the Gemini with such topics will probably make most of current users leave and the Gemini will become similar to Fediverse but without all that bling.
From time to time I like to check some news from FLOSS world on fosstodon.org, so I would like something like this on Gemini, tho.
From time to time I like to check some news from FLOSS world on fosstodon.org, so I would like something like this on Gemini, tho.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
@pista I’ve though about it but I’m not really sure how it should look. Copypasting some news from Fosstodon to my Gemini capsule or on BBS looks too much like low-effort spam. Any thoughts about it?
@Aelspire you could set up a proxy
Rewrite it as a short summary with a link to the original text and work out a discussion system. You could probably modify the source to Bubble (what you are using right now).
Would basically be like a Gemini version of Slashdot back in the day.
👻 darkghost · Nov 27 at 00:22:
Forgive me for attacking the premise but as I see it, you can't drive mass adoption and simultaneously keep corporate interests at bay. (But you need to keep existing users engaged) Gemini isn't inherently immune to things like ads or some forms of tracking. The W3C sets protocol for the web, but they are ignored by the big browser makers who shove standards breaking things like ActiveX or AMP down our throats. We are very small and it isn't hard for one modestly funded company to overtake the entire thing, no matter if it's open source. (Chrome and Apache are both open source!) The thing that keeps that from happening is a small, niche user base. Many of those here reject the state of the WWW.
I think @satch hit the right balance here. gemlogs and a bit of social with BBS and Station. Currently the front page here is digestible without filters on the daily, which I like. As others, I welcome newcomers, and I agree we need them, you'll just see the "be careful what you wish for" answers because there's a good pace and balance here found nowhere else on the internet.
+1 for saying gemlogs are the soul of Gemini, it really is how it started.
👻 darkghost · Nov 27 at 00:35:
Addressing the premise, I have tried to engage some technically minded friends into Gemini and they didn't find it terribly appealing. There's a hyper-utilitarian philosophy that your software needs "purpose" even if people spend their days engaging with recreational corporate media platforms. But they _could_ also do banking, research, or shopping, something Gemini doesn't do. Many of my friends subscribe to this philosophy de facto but not explicitly acknowledged. Gemini is strictly for a hobby and it requires some learning for something that is, on its surface, somewhat intangible. I'm not sure why it is such a heavy lift though. Maybe I need to spend some more time than a casual "hey check this thing out."
😎 bababooey [OP/mod] · Nov 27 at 07:28:
I'm not sure why it is such a heavy lift though. Maybe I need to spend some more time than a casual "hey check this thing out."
I think the utility of Gemini isn't immediately apparent for two reasons:
1. It primarily presents itself as a technology rather than a tool.
2. Gemini is often stated as being related to privacy or simplicity, which unfortunately doesn't say much since the meaning of these terms have been overused and watered-down in software and technology.
This is why I think it'd be a good idea to identify all the ways in which Gemini can be said to tangibly offer value.
👻 darkghost · Nov 27 at 14:20:
Definitely helps having a Google AI with the same damn name to misdirect.
"Make it better by providing interesting content or improving it"
and that's the beauty of gemini
One environment where Geminispace has the upper hand over the Web is the terminal, in terms of user experience. And who uses the terminal the most? The software devs, devops and IT admins. So to me the IT crowd could be big users of the Geminispace. That's why I've developed a JSdoc server for Geminispace for example.
🎵 alice-sur-le-nuage · Nov 27 at 21:16:
When I first encountered the Internet, the web was just a small space amongst others. We had IRC where you might encounter by luck rumours of an FTP server, strange paths you had to navigate on said server to find troves of forbidden documents on all sorts of topics. It was special because it was obscure. I don't want an amazing AI powered search engine that discovers everything. I want mystery and magic, and gemini brings back a bit of that. Finding gemini itself is like finding the entrance to a secret temple in the jungle. Few people make it there, and there are adventures ahead. If you wanted to make gemini more accessible you'd need to change that hidden temple into an amusement park. But when you do that, you lose the magic, and that would sadden me. I'm not an elitist - anyone can find the hidden temple. But you have to want to.
👻 darkghost · Nov 28 at 00:06:
here's a killer application of Gemini: there is no algorithm deciding what it thinks he would like. Anything you access is your decision to seek out. Once you get there there are no dark patterns trying to keep you on a consumptive treadmill. If I really wanted to sell it I would argue that there is a freedom of thought that emerges from these aspects. While it is feasible that somebody could program an algorithm and these dark patterns that keep you on the consumptive treadmill, the tech hobbles it from being as effective.
That’s what the World Wide Web was before YOU became the product.
Even search engines in the days of Lycos and Webcrawler were closer to how Kennedy works.
👻 shikitohno · Nov 28 at 05:10:
I'm not convinced it makes sense to approach this from a non-ideological point of view. As I see it, Gemini is fundamentally ideological, created as it was in response to issues with the internet as it exists over other protocols, http in particular. You can't, in my opinion, avoid a certain level of ideology in expanding it without losing some of what makes it special.
I think the effort might be better spent in improving ease of use and user-experience for those who are already interested. Things like ease of discovering content you're interested in beyond randomly stumbling upon it come to mind. That said, I don't see any pressing need to try and speed up this process, myself.
To my thinking, Gemini’s base value is a very simple document format that supports linking and is designed to prevent design from getting in the way of content.
All value beyond that is what people come here and create.
If that doesn’t grab someone’s attention, he/she probably won’t fit in around here. Chasing “critical mass” is a mistake because this is a place for people to build, not to consume.
👻 darkghost · Nov 28 at 18:30:
I think this is a big appeal. Building and not consuming. And the nostalgia that tickles in people harkens to an early web that was still very much in a building phase.
It can be. But we have to come here and make things for here.
Halfassed Web to gemini conversions with no thoughts given to document structure or navigation will just pollute everything as bad as AI content would.
Who is saying, “I can’t wait to get on gemini to read the exact same content I see on the web, but with a screwed up document structure and no pictures”?