I'd suggest you just start doing that, perhaps with an email to HN mods requesting support for Gemini URIs.
I'm pretty sure that you'll get shot down (politely) the first few times, but the requests (and appearance of Gemini URIs) will give an indication of whether or not the protocol itself is gaining in usage.
I do have a Gemini browser installed on a few systems, but use it rarely for want of content or presentation of links. OTOH, I've watched the rise in prevalence of Mastodon / Fediverse links on HN with interest.
I used Gopher and Hytelnet before the web existed. I am not particularly nostalgic about it. I don’t want to go back to such simplistic interfaces.
This is the first I’m hearing of it, but I’m guessing it’s going to have an uphill battle now that Google named its AI Gemini. My first thought was that it is Google related, and when I did a search, Google’s AI was featured prominently in the results. I had to know what I was looking for, based on your description, to find it.
I don’t think there is anything I want to read badly enough to jump over to a separate browser. The same goes for .onion links. The topic would need to be very compelling, without a mirror on the “normal” internet.