Web Revival

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A movement focused on capturing the creativity and openness of the early Internet.

We aren't here to watch Big Web burn (we have plenty of communities for that) but to find positive ways we can make the Small Web better.

Elsewhere in the Fediverse:

founded 3 weeks ago

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The Gemini protocol, a lighter alternative to the web's HTTP (geminiprotocol.net)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The Gemini protocol is brutally simple, which makes it just about too useless for apps, tracking, and commercial purposes. Gemtext, the format for Gemini pages, is very basic; with about half as many features as markdown, it's barely a step above plain text. As a result, Gemini is a small universe of blogs and personal sites.

Its simplicity makes it easy for people to create compatible clients and services for it. It's self-hosting friendly and there are also hosting services, like smol.pub and some pubnixes.

Of course, you'll need to get a Gemini browser or visit a Gemini-to-web proxy to access it.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (19 children)

Because it was designed on purpose to not even have the ability to be enshittified. No scripting engine, on purpose -- no popup ads. No cookies, no tracking.

Things that were originally thought as good things to add to the browser in retrospect have been abused so much, it's better to not have them available for mis-use.

[–] moseschrute 20 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

The issue is the structures motivating companies to enshittify. Not the technology. Blame late stage capitalism not JavaScript.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This

[–] moseschrute 4 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks. I’m building my own Lemmy client and I’m leaning very heavily on JavaScript 😅, but it’s 100% local first, only depending on the Lemmy API.

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