Five Years on Gemini
2026-03-31
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Rob's Gemini Capsule launched into orbit five years ago today.
My life was in quite a different place back then. Professionally, 2021 was two jobs ago. I lived in a different city, and though I worked at a local company, I was not allowed to travel on-site due to COVID-19 concerns. America had just experienced a bitterly-divisive Presidential election. Social media became the only mechanism we had to stay in touch with each other--and it was heavily tracked, surveilled and censored. I was overwhelmed by the negative news and caustic slapfights happening all over the mainline Internet. I had already deactivated my Facebook and deleted my Twitter and Reddit accounts, so in 2021, I began to explore the small Web.
Though the Gemini protocol dates back to 2019, it saw an explosion of popularity in 2021. According to Lupa, the number of Gemini capsules quadrupled from 2021-01-01 to 2022-01-01. Some early adopters embraced Gemini's expansion, and others were alarmed at the new culture that came with it, and some of those pioneers left while others remained. Many have speculated on why Gemini became so popular at that time: I believe COVID-19 restrictions, a toxic social media landscape, and some key signal boosts on HackerNews and Lobste.rs were the big drivers.
I found Geminispace during that period of growing pains. My presence actually started with a gopherhole, which I still run but have largely abandoned. I started writing a phlog on 2021-02-09, and when I launched my capsule, I mirrored my phlog there; that's why my first log entry predates the launch of my capsule by almost two months. In those days I had an ISP that gave me a static IP address, so I self-hosted my gopherhole and my Gemini capsule. I eventually moved them to AWS in 2023.
Through Gemini (and Gopher), I discovered a new world of self-hosting. I'd never written a CGI script before I made a gopherhole, and I'd never managed network rules and handle abusive IP addresses before launching my capsule. While Gemini doesn't face the same challenges as a full HTTP Web server, I've still had to deal with failed services, traffic floods, overloaded processes, and corrupted user data. The experience has taught me a lot about running an independent Internet service--and it isn't easy.
The Gemini community has also changed quite a bit since 2021. solderpunk was still ironing out the Gemini protocol specification, which was at a relatively early stage of development at that point. About 800 capsule were known to exist when I launched my capsule, and that number has ballooned to over 4500 today. OrbitalFox maintained a Gemini mailing list in 2021, where new ideas were discussed and existing design decisions debated. The protocol and the Gemtext markup format were defined in one spec rather than two. Many new Gemini servers were built, each embodying slightly different paradigms. However, the core protocol specification has not changed very much since then.
Today, I feel, the design choices for Gemini are largely settled. Some people complain about what is missing, and some still discuss adding extensions for one task or another, but the core of the protocol is stable. Because of that, I feel Gemini is reaching the same technological stage as Gopher: the community has mostly accepted its limitations and is willing to work inside them rather than petition to change them. That might also contribute to what some people feel is Gemini's recent stagnation, which might be more accurately described as stabilization.
Gemini is a hobbyist community. No major organizations have a presence on the protocol, and as such, the infrastructure of the community is driven by individual enthusiasts that contribute as they are able. Over time, capsules rise and gain popularity, only for the creator to eventually leave the community for one reason or another. Sometimes, popular capsules disappear overnight without a trace. Other services appear and disappear, such as once-ubiquitous Geminispace.info, or even my own chess service. (That might come back one day as I improve my backend skills, but that's another story!) There's a certain impermanence to my encounters on Gemini, knowing that someday our paths might diverge once again.
On the other hand, because the protocol is so stable, the content shared on Gemini has a certain timelessness. I can use a modern client to read a Gemtext documents from Gemini's earliest days, and I can use a client from 2020 to read something that was just posted yesterday morning. My preferred Gemini clients are Kristall on desktop and deedum on mobile. Both has very slow development cycles, but that's not a problem: Gemini isn't changing underneath them. Gopher has the same property, which is why very old CLI browsers like Lynx are still perfectly usable for it. HTTP browsers can't do that: leaving aside the issue of expiring root CA certificates, Web standards are evolving so rapidly that browsers from even five years ago often can't load 2026 sites properly.
Gemini's stability means that people aren't attracted to the allure of the protocol's power. In the Worldwide Web, flashy style sheets and fancy Javascript applications drive engagement. Gemini's strength comes entirely from the quality of the content it serves. People who aren't interested in contributing meaningful thoughts and ideas will not stay in Geminispace, because there's nothing else to keep them hooked. That's a good thing: it means that Geminispace is naturally disinclined to be filled with AI posts and other empty forms of content, or at least more disinclined than the mainline Internet. If what I say is not interesting, people will not visit my capsule; there's little else I can do to entice visitors.
Gemini is my favorite technological hobby project I've ever picked up. And I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Here's to five more years on Gemini, and five more after that, and five more after that.
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[Last updated: 2026-03-31]