Finger was the original Twitter. We used to get updates on Quake's development from John Carmack by fingering his email. He used to write elaborate ".plan" files too, no nonsense character limits were in sight yet. It was magical. It worked like this:
$ finger johnc@idsoftware.com
No retweets, no likes, no notifications, no HN frontpage, but John Carmack kept writing them, and we kept reading. Even without any amplification dynamics, it was still engaging.
I've tried the same now, 30 years after my last finger. It wasn't even installed on Ubuntu by default. I had to install it, and expectedly:
$ finger johnc@idsoftware.com
finger: connect: Connection timed out
I don't knock Gemini for existing and being a neat project, but even for hobby it seems too restrictive. No cookies means no authenticated interaction with a site, no inline images means it's less informative than a 100 year old encyclopedia.
Perhaps a "Simple Web" spec could be created to audit a site and verify its privacy and simplicity protections. Things like "Cookies only for auth", "No JS" or "low JS", "No ref tracking in or out", "No tracking pixels", etc.
You'd have to prove these things are possible in the face of the ingenuity of the entire adtech industry. The limitations you point out, on the other hand, have easy solutions:
If you want to support cat pictures that show up without clicking a link, but prevent any behavioral exhaust from tracking pixels, that seems to be an open problem. Every new feature is like this: a risk surface until proven otherwise. So to reduce risk you have to limit features, i.e. jank.
Your claim was, "Janky is the price you have to pay to avoid adtech", but adtech can't prevent you from making a non-janky, universally accessible page or site about your cats or whatever you like.
One doesn't (as I type this) need to abandon modern standards and move to the digital equivalent of an off-grid cabin in the woods in order to avoid adtech.
Nothing prevents a gemini browser from showing inline images (though it might be officially discouraged?). They are just links.
But actually loading images separately can work well. If you are reading for the text content you can save the time and bandwidth to load of all the images, or maybe you want to look at one image in detail, you can load just that one, and zoom or frame that independently of the surrounding text.
I've tried the same now, 30 years after my last finger. It wasn't even installed on Ubuntu by default. I had to install it, and expectedly:
Perhaps a "Simple Web" spec could be created to audit a site and verify its privacy and simplicity protections. Things like "Cookies only for auth", "No JS" or "low JS", "No ref tracking in or out", "No tracking pixels", etc.
* auth: Look at https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini#services Tons of services support some form of auth.
Edit: https://martinrue.com/station is another service I use that's missing in the above list.
* images: click to load
Janky but doable. Janky is the price you have to pay to avoid adtech.
I don't understand, unless adtech is holding your family hostage and forcing you to adtech. Can you elaborate?
One doesn't (as I type this) need to abandon modern standards and move to the digital equivalent of an off-grid cabin in the woods in order to avoid adtech.
But actually loading images separately can work well. If you are reading for the text content you can save the time and bandwidth to load of all the images, or maybe you want to look at one image in detail, you can load just that one, and zoom or frame that independently of the surrounding text.