 Hello there today. We're gonna talk about something boring that no one actually cares about, but I don't know maybe it'll be an interesting discussion People ask me a lot about these things that you've never heard about called the gopher protocol and the Gemini protocol Ooh Gemini protocol that sounds I don't know that's it's like from the Matrix or I don't know it's very cyberpunk, right? And they often ask me to talk about them or endorse them or do videos on them. What are they? No one knows I will explain to you briefly in this video Now the reason they have become popular recently is because there are many other YouTube influencers who have done videos on these kind of things now what they are well to explain the background I should say one recurring theme on this channel and many other channels nowadays in my neighborhood Okay, is that I complain a lot about web bloat Too many ads too many trackers too much scripting Informational content is hard to get to the internet is way bigger than it's supposed to be it's it's insecure Your privacy is always at risk. There are a bunch of bad things about the internet nowadays and specifically most of them happen Over the HTTP protocol, right when you go to a website what a website is it's something served over the HTTP Protocol or HTTPS nowadays because it's all encrypted. Okay. Now gopher is also a protocol similar I mean similar but different same genre More or less as HTTP Now you can't go there are gopher sites on the internet. You can't just go there with your browser You have to have a special gopher browser. Okay, but you go to these sites and they're usually very simple. They're text-based I don't know they're very nice and minimalistic So a lot of people come to me and and Jim and I I should say what Jim and I is is a modern, you know I guess a modern version not not a modern version of gopher, but it's supposed to be You take some principles of gopher gopher and I think some things in HTTP and they make them I guess modern It's automatically over encrypted connections and stuff like that Okay, so a lot of people come to me and they say Luke. Why don't you do videos on this? This seems like exactly what you wouldn't want to do a video on okay now I do not care about these things right now theoretically I might care in the future, but I absolutely do not care now and I Although there are other people who do videos on them have talked about browsers and stuff like that I view them as it's just pointless to me and let me explain why now again They might become pointful later on, but they are pointless right now and that is because Any of these kind of web protocols they are gonna live or die based on networking effects Okay, you can say something like gopher is a better protocol than HTTP and maybe in some ways That's right, but it doesn't actually matter because HTTP one Okay, all the sites out there are using HTTP and if you put up a gopher site or if you put up a Gemini site No, no normal human is actually going to be able to see that the only people who see that are the people who use these niche Protocols, okay, so a lot of people. Oh Luke. Why don't you have a Gemini site? Why don't you have a gopher site blah blah blah what you should get one dude? It's so cool That is not something I'm interested in because I want people to see my sites Okay, like that that's the goal like the people making those sites And I'm not knocking the people who do they are just interested in the technology They want to figure it out. They want to see what they can do now If you want to talk to someone about these things if you want them to make them go become a big thing The the real people to complain not complain to but to go to is go to people who design browsers go to Brenda And I can say hey in you should work into the brave browser So the ability to open a gopher site in my browser, okay? Because right now people have to get add-ons or different browsers to look at gopher sites or Gemini sites or stuff like that And nothing is going to check like you need the networking effects for this to be something that normal humans are going to use right? It's not like you are not going to get everyone in the world to switch to this new protocol that you can't access over HTTP But if you if you do something like work them into browsers or something like that like if if a normie has given a Gopher link and their browser knows how to open that that's something that's workable Well right now it is just not okay. That's not how it is and I actually severely doubt I mean maybe it'll happen, but I doubt that like someone is going to add Maybe okay, I don't want to be too too much of a downer But I just don't view that as a likely thing that browsers are gonna be like oh, let's let's add compatibility with gopher sites or stuff like that Now I mentioned Brenda nike and brave because they bring the brave browser actually have has added in like they add in They added in like web torrent stuff So they have added in the ability to interact with other protocols and that's very nice So they would probably actually be the ones like most likely to to do something like this but Additionally, I'm gonna I'm gonna simp for HTTP Just for a second because a lot of people do say stuff like this Oh, well, you know the nice thing about gopher and the nice thing about Gemini is you can't have tracking Because they don't have these abilities in them. You can't have you know complex scripting You can't have soy devory and stuff like that right and sure there's a level on which that's nice Like it would be nice if I could just log on my browser and you know, I click on a site that says it's a gopher site Oh, look, I don't have to worry about all this kind of stuff. Sure But I mean one of the nice things. I mean, it's not necessarily a good thing to have few abilities Okay, HTTP, although, you know, you guys know that I will be the first to You know complain about JavaScript and tracking and ads and all this kind of stuff But like there's a sense in which the like people want and need Some degree of scripting and other things like these things are necessary on the internet now Obviously, I am the first one to say that they should not be on 99% of sites But you do need the at least the ability in certain situations to have something more advanced and HTTP Has that worked into it or at least on top of it in a very ugly sense, but it works Okay, so just a right a minor exam, you know, although I will always say JavaScript's bad And it like it should not be a normal thing to put in the website There are legitimate uses on JavaScript. For example, I have JavaScript running On my peer tube instance. Okay for people to interact with videos It's it's more or less necessary for there if you go to my donate page. Okay, what is it? Like a Luke Smith that XYZ slash donate. Okay that donate page has JavaScript. What's the point of the JavaScript there? Well, if you decide to donate with a credit card or something it uses JavaScript to go directly to the payment processor So your data is not stored on my server. Okay, that's for safety and legal reasons so that's that's a good example of of things where You really need JavaScript and so or like these kind of bloated protocols, which again are not essentially evil But it's 99% of the time they're used for evil But there are there are reasons that you actually want these things. Okay, so I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to say Oh, well Jim and I or go for you cannot bloat them. Okay, that's not necessarily a good thing You want the ability to blow them you want the ability to do lots of things in them But I mean the problem is really discipline like in people who are making websites. That's you know, you know My belief. I think that people just need to learn to restrain themselves So anyway, that's why I don't really do videos on gopher or Gemini and I'm not really that interested in them I think that if browsers I mean if browsers come out with the ability for normal people to actually view these kind of sites That might be interesting. I am not gonna make one and the other thing is, you know People will say stuff like oh well Luke you can have this web server that also serves your gopher site or your Gemini site over HTTP and it and to me that's like useless. Why don't I just have an HTTP site? Okay, what's the point of that having an extra little converter to convert it? Like there's no point. You know what? I mean, I think the the bottleneck is on the browser side if you want these things to be serious things Don't come to me Thinking that I might popularize them. Okay, because that's not that's not what I'm gonna do Go to the browsers and the people who are developing these and say hey It would be nice if you had this compatibility with that protocol. I don't think that's very likely But it hey it might happen So yeah, hopefully that not just clears up my views on Gemini and gopher, but also You know, I guess again, I'm not against I'm not against technology like JavaScript or Server-side or scripting or anything like that But all of it has to be used with extreme discipline Okay, and I like the ability to have those things but they have to be used responsibly and they're not most of the time But they have to be used responsibly. Anyway, that's it