Has anyone built a Gemini Fediverse server?

I just discovered Gemini today, and it is a fascinating approach to the Internet.

One possibility that seems interesting is to build a Fediverse server with a Gemini front-end.

It would have the following properties:

Identity would be a Gemini certificate.

The identity would be communicated in ActivePub as a hash/fingerprint of the public key. For example as @uyzwisfenxq3ydha@gemini.social

Posts would be just Gemini input (10) requests with all the post text in the single 1024 character query parameter

The main view would be a sequence of posts of followed accounts from anywhere on the Fediverse.

All the usual Mastodon features (like, boost, follow) would be implemented by clicking on links under posts

Has anyone built anything like this? Does it make sense?

Posted in: s/Fediverse

🚀 Éamonn

2023-12-31 · 5 months ago · 👍 Minko_Ikana, pkitz, n3m3516, istvan, mounderfod, flatfuzz, doriancodes · 🤘 1

22 Comments ↓

🐙 norayr · Dec 31 at 00:48:

yes, dimkr created tootik

— https://github.com/dimkr/tootik/

it is amazing.

🐙 norayr · Dec 31 at 00:51:

author's instance՝

— hd.206267.xyz/

🚀 Éamonn [OP] · Dec 31 at 01:05:

Very cool. Trying it now ...

🚀 Minko_Ikana · Dec 31 at 01:07:

"and it is a fascinating approach to the Internet."

It sure is... :)

🚀 Éamonn [OP] · Dec 31 at 01:51:

— hd.206267.xyz/users/view/eb992209711b25c1c0e1a4ccef13e9d46144c879f36b6b8adef5796a5f39e501

🚀 Éamonn [OP] · Dec 31 at 01:53:

Above is my first tootkit post,

It was cool to see it federated to my Mastodon instance and be able to reply there

😈 dimkr · Dec 31 at 17:18:

Thanks all, I don't know why but I see interest in the project growing (maybe thanks to Meta? :D) and I'm really glad to receive feedback. I hope to see more instances and more contributors in 2024 :)

💎 istvan · Jan 23 at 15:50:

Thank so much for your work. I threw up a tootik server too. Took a little figuring out, but eventually was able to follow people on other instances. Pretty happy with how it works. Only improve I can think of is avatar support for when people view you from the foreign servers.

😈 dimkr · Jan 25 at 16:58:

@istvan I'll add a link to a user's avatar, above the summary text. Thanks for the feedback, I'm always glad to see new users and especially new instances.

💎 istvan · Jan 29 at 14:58:

Actually I meant set a link to your own avatar. Right now it looks like something randomly generated. But your response is a great idea too!

💎 istvan · Feb 18 at 01:58:

Hey dimkr, just installed update and see link to users avatar and header. Great! Is there any way tootik Settings could let a user specify a link to their own avatar/header? Would be nice for when Fediverse users are viewing accounts on Tootik.

😈 dimkr · Feb 18 at 06:44:

@istvan Right now - no. This would require hosting the images (so tooik can serve them, instead of linking to another domain) and having some means of upload (Titan?). It can be done, but I'd like to finish other "core" things (like followers synchronization) first.

💎 istvan · Feb 18 at 09:56:

Doesn't the activitypub [icon] field allow specification of any URL? Don't think there is technically any prohibition on remote media. I thought it's just icon{url, type, mediaType}. Should it be same as updating your bio or display name?

😈 dimkr · Feb 18 at 12:24:

@istvan Yes, it's a URL, and changing this field is a super simple query. But it would be best not to use an external URL and serve it from the same host. It takes more time to fetch an external resource (second DNS lookup + HTTP request), this URL can break or the user can use this for malicious purposes (like publishing spam and exploiting CVE-2023-4863 when users view spammy posts).

💎 istvan · Feb 18 at 12:36:

Could fetch the remote image and store locally, but I can see where that opens a new problem of serving and managing attachments that tootik doesn’t currently need to deal with.

On the other hand, profiles get cached by most servers and many like Mastodon/Pleroma/MissKey save the image to local cache for n days for their users, so the occasional remote image fetch probably is not such a hit in the grand Fediverse scheme.

😈 dimkr · Feb 18 at 13:19:

@istvan I agree. I can fetch the image from a URL or implement image upload (though Titan or some other protocol) with some dimensions+size limit, then optimize+convert the image. The biggest work item is the upload thing.

💎 istvan · Feb 18 at 13:21:

For now I just manually edited the db to add the necessary fields to my user, then updated username via gemini interface to trigger a fetch among followers’ servers.

Seems to work fine.

😈 dimkr · Apr 22 at 07:11:

@istvan Forgot to update here - tootik now supports avatar upload over Titan

🐙 norayr · Apr 23 at 00:52:

great. do you plan to support image uploads for posts?

😈 dimkr · Apr 23 at 08:08:

@norayr As usual, the answer is 'currently no' 🫶

🎵 hedy · Apr 24 at 12:23:

@dimkr this looks wonderful, and I really like that you've included a detailed code architecture breakdown! what did you use to make those diagrams?

😈 dimkr · Apr 24 at 17:39:

@hedy The Wikipedia page for box drawing characters, ctrl+c and ctrl+v ☺️