The argument for the lack of it is that pixel trackers could be used to break privacy.
This shows that the Gemini devs didn’t know what they were doing. You can track people by parsing your server logs if you want. You don’t need a pixel tracker to do that. Limiting images to local server links only would have done the job.
Thats not the only argument against inline images:
4.4.3 Why doesn’t text/gemini support inline images?
This is a deliberate decision made in direct service of the guiding principle of user autonomy (see answer 4.2.2), specifically the idea that text/gemini documents should have no way to trigger additional network requests. Images are one particular case where this principle also overlaps substantially with our guiding principle of user privacy (see answer 4.2.1). So-called “tracking-pixels” have been a standard tool of the internet’s surveillance marketing complex for many years. These tiny, invisible images abuse the web’s behaviour of automatically downloading image files from arbitrary third-party servers to effectively trick your computer into “pinging” surveillance servers, reporting your movements as you explore the web.
The argument for the lack of it is that pixel trackers could be used to break privacy.
This shows that the Gemini devs didn’t know what they were doing. You can track people by parsing your server logs if you want. You don’t need a pixel tracker to do that. Limiting images to local server links only would have done the job.
Thats not the only argument against inline images:
gemini://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq-section-4.gmi
I still believe that sacrifing images completely is a terrible idea.
I mean, you can have external images, and its then the job of the browser how to display them; be it inline, in a new tab, replacing the page etc.