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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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yeah i've heard about gemini but i don't like that they don't just work over HTTP (which would be entirely doable, btw). so i need to download a custom client or a browser plug-in, and i don't like it. i shouldn't have to install another 3rd-party software on my device just to interact with online content which the browser can already do perfectly fine.
The slight technical ceremony is, a bit tongue-in-cheek, needed to keep the umwashed masses away.
And the technical and media limitations are - and here I am totally serious - needed to keep boundless greedy corporarions away which sooner or later destroy every living or creative thing they touch.
and it also keeps me away. i don't like non-standard software for use-cases where existing software can already do the job well. that's just artificially fucked-up architecture. artificial scarcity
Well, then there the normal web is for you, which certainly does its job well to flood you with ads and track you at every step.
An important point is that advertising, tracking, all the junk which the OP link demonstrates, is technically not possible in the gemini protocol. It is designed to be minimal and serve text and single media files.
The gemini client is not a site-specific app, but a very lightweight browser for this protocol. All available clients are free and libre open source programs.
btw this is false. companies can still write a small text to advertise their product or create an advertisement image and distribute it over gemini. if the protocol allows data transfer, then it also allows distribution of ads.
You do not know what you are talking about.
Ads are almost never displayed by choice of the reader. People have limited resources of attention, they know attention is precious, and they are not fond of things leeching it.
To see an ad in Geminispace, you would need to deliberately open a page with an ad. This is by implementation. There are no embedded ads. There is also no support for tracking in the Gemini protocol, and no JavaScript and such. You don't need ad-infested libraries, the Gemini space is not centralized so that big corporations can't inject ads into it, and running a Gemini server is so cheap that you don't need ads to pay it - costing a few dozens Euro cents per month, if you count the cost of a Raspberry Pi B and perhaps 9 kWh of electricity per year.
But to make it more concrete and practical:
Here is a Gemini-to-HTTP Gateway which shows a page which lists, in section 2.2.1, Gemini aggregators. As an entry point to geminispace:
https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq-section-2.gmi
You can start there and search.
Gemini has maybe ten thousand pages.
Now, show me a single Gemini page with an ad.