Would Gemini survive an attack by the mainstream commercial users out there? I keep wondering...i mean its wonderful that there's this great community of folks and a bunch of pretty useful advice and articles....but what happens when mainstream media and similar folks decide to move in? At the very least i'd imagine that they'd start posting click-baity attention grabbing articles....and overrun places like this - bbs....with their content. Are there any plans in place to prevent stuff like this from happening? What are the thoughts overall on how this community can scale without being hijacked by commercial interests like any other platform out there?

Posted in: s/Geminispace

🚀 maha

2023-09-17 · 8 months ago · 👍 stack, gemalaya

5 Comments ↓

🚀 stack · 2023-09-17 at 22:55:

As clseibold pointed out, there are two separate issues: commerialization and masses-of-asses.

The first one requires a profit motive. Given that current generation of Gemini users will not tolerate advertising, it is unlikely anyone would step in.

The second may be a problem, but given the relative lack of features of Gemini that asses like, it seems unlikely as well.

However should it somehow come to pass that user volume surges, it may be possible that the new, undiscriminating ass-users may tolerate advertising, and things may change.

🍀 gritty · 2023-09-17 at 23:55:

I'll weigh in here too and echo: Gemini is designed to resist this kind of attention. not by technical walls to scale but its limited, non-flashy feature set.

I'll also add that if there is an influx, the very culture of this place would be resistant to such users and they'd probably find some other place to flourish. Also there can be multiple bbs and antenna instances so we can potentially outlast or coexist with those folks in here.

given enough time though, my bet is they grow bored and leave.

☕️ Morgan · 2023-09-18 at 07:26:

There are so many reasons ads can't work on Gemini that it made for a couple of lengthy posts :)

— Bootstrapping

I think if there's any problem on the horizon it's to do with too many people; independent capsules, hand crafted links and an appreciation for the slow might be enough to run well anyway.

I'm not worried, better to focus on enjoying what we have, anyway :)

☕️ Morgan · 2023-09-18 at 19:30:

Agreed with, enjoy for what it is now :)

🚀 maha [OP] · 2023-09-27 at 16:10:

Just read through the comments on the posts. Great read. Commercial vs mainstream is a good separation, not having hackable popularity hogging metrics or pages is very important I think. Also totally agree on not differentating normal users, Most real people I meet are pretty sensible. I really feel that its the media companies who like putting out absurd stuff to attract attention and trigger (unnecessary) debates and conversations.

And lastly, yes, absolutely love the thought of not really caring much and letting the platform evolve into whatever it grows into. We never know what it might trigger.