I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS - and You Should Too
I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS - and You Should Too
Blogger discovers this cool thing called "RSS".
To OP and the few other comments sarcastically dunking on the blogger for just discovering RSS: why? It's not exactly drowning in advocates today, and there's basically a whole generation that wasn't around when Google killed off Reader. What if we treated advocacy like this like the good thing it is?
You make my heart hurt, you're so right. It's getting harder and harder to find RSS or Atom links on sites. The more people rediscover these technologies, the more chance there is that site developers will continue to provide them.
It would be fantastic if more people would rediscover Usenet, and IRC, and ditch the shitty knock-offs like Discord. There's a pretty big contingent advocating for Jabber, which I'm ambivalent about, having been there when it started and when it (effectively) died and being very conscious of its flaws and limitations... but, still, these are all open standards and old-school internet - sometimes pre-web! - and they're often still better than the commoditized successors.
Embrace and encourage the new infusion of youth! Gate keeping is a very post-eternal-September behavior.
Pretty much everyone who has an RSS feed has it accidentally.
What might motivate someone to move away from using Discord?
https://archive.today/1Lfct "Spyware Level: EXTREMELY HIGH"
Usenet and IRC have bad usability and lack features compared to Discord.
IM applications like Jabber and such have been replaced by messenger apps like Telegram.
there's basically a whole generation that wasn't around when Google killed off Reader.
🥺 😭
I don't think "dunking" is the right word. It's just funny that people are still discovering RSS 30 years later. Myself included.
Cool tip.
If you want news for a specific game and they release news on steam.. all steam pages have an RSS feed.
Genuinely did not know that, thanks
Wow that's really neat, thanks!
Protip: Youtube channels have RSS feeds, they're just buried in the source of the page. Ctrl-U and then Ctrl-F title="RSS"
I guess to get actual value from these videos you will still need to visit youtube.com though, in the end giving them valuable data to analyze.
You can also just drop the youtube channel link (ex. https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips ) as well into most readers and it'll sort it out for you, so you don't even have to go digging.
I wrote my own rss reader for youtubue, so it does this digging for me when I paste in a channel link :)
TIL. Gonna have to test this out my FreshRSS feed. Ty 🥰
It's in order if you only use the subscriptions tab too
I've recently rediscovered RSS and I'm in love with it. I just wish Meta wasn't a piece of fuck and let you add Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. there are some workarounds for the latter, but they're really finicky.
member when all the big cool web 2.0 companies had public facing APIs?
That was just for the growth and acquisition phase, using the network effect to capture consumers and businesses, get them addicted and dependent on the product, and then build a wall around them to lock them into your platform.
It's a classic bait and switch, and if we didn't live in corporate dictatorships masquerading as "democracy" it'd be illegal.
I member when there was no official reddit mobile app, only third party clients, and they were so good.
With bibliogram you can follow instagram pages in rss: https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/
Facebook pages used to work with rss bridge: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge
With bibliogram you can follow instagram pages in rss
good luck finding an instance that works.
Facebook pages used to work with rss bridge
I'm well aware of the RSS Bridge and I use several of them hosted on the main instance, but how does "used to work" help? Facebook used to actually provide RSS feeds for their pages and they used to work, too.
Not an RSS solution, but in IG if you tap the "Instagram" logo at the top/right, a menu will pop up. You can select "following" to (mostly) see the accounts you're following (and in reverse chronological order.)
that requires having an account.
I never stopped using it. It's a shame some sites don't have an rss feed anymore though...
Some RSS readers have the ability to generate an RSS feed from a site if they don't support it. Some sites don't show they have an RSS feed but they actually do.
Some smaller news sites share RSS feeds or newsletters if you support them on patreon.
How do you all discover new RSS feeds to subscribe to?
Most of the feeds I subscribe to came to me in one of two ways:
- I enjoyed reading an article posted somewhere else (Lemmy, etc.) so I sought out the feed of that publisher.
- Sometimes news outlets enter into agreements to republish each others articles. When they do this, the re-publisher will usually include a little blurb at the end giving credit to the original publisher. If a feed I'm already subscribed to has an article re-published from elsewhere then I click through and check out the original source to see if I want to follow them as well.
Kagi Small Web, personally. Also a lot of people who blog on the Fediverse have RSS feeds, so discovery via Mastodon and such is good too.
Wordpress sites publish an rss feed by default at site.com/rss or site.com/feed, so there's a good chance a site you want an rss feed for has one even if they didn't intend to.
My way is simple and stupid. I hit F12, then search for “rss” in the html and copy the link
I use Feedly for discovery, they have a crap load of websites you can subscribe to even if the websites don't explicitly advertise RSS.
And then use the Feedly desktop website to get the actual RSS URL and put it in the client of your choice 🙃
I use an extension that searches the code on the page to find them. It puts a little number up, then when you click it you can copy the link.
- Look around in your online communities and see what publications get shared.
- Once you find some sites you like, search the web/communities for alternatives with the same topic/vibe.
- If you find journalists you like, see where else they publish their works, or what publications they used to work at. For bloggers / content creators, see who they collaborate with.
You can set Google alerts for search terms. You'll get articles when they pop up. Apparently I have the same name as a politician in Canada, so I get to keep up with what's going on with that.
I recently rediscovered RSS with Read You on F-Droid (I enjoy it's UI and bionic reading). I also found something on Github called Follow that I use on my desktop running CachyOS.
People should be rediscovering RSS. It's news that you tailor to yourself and doesn't come bundled with the "social" part of social media.
The problem I run into is most news sites optimize for 2 things
- Getting on google
- Getting linked on Twitter or Reddit
So most sites have a fuck ton of noise and carpet bomb ads.
I'd love to go back to the RSS model but it's hard finding sites worth reading again.
This is why I legit built my own space news app , because my autistic brain can't handle all the crap they've added to pages. I just need the text, and images. I don't need links to other articles in the body of the article! I'm currently reading this article!! and stop citing your own articles as sources!
Find one or two sites you regularly like from your usual sources. Then when THOSE sources link to another source, FOLLOW that link. If that site has good content, add it to your list.
It doesn't take long to build a solid RSS feed, just need to spend a little time curating it. The key is to pay attention to who is providing the info.
Don't like the direction a site is going, remove it from your feed.
If you see that one source is commonly the original source for information, or reporting make sure you do what you can to support it. Do they have a patreon? Can you share it out to your other sources?
Also, make sure you're not falling into a bubble, follow national and international news sources.
Yeah, is there some sort of directory or something? That'd be cool.
On Firefox on Android there is a reader mode that gives you just the text and images. It's the little icon next to the url. Sometimes you can bypass a paywall if you press it really quick before the page finishes loading.
Lemme clarify a bit. I love reader mode too and agree it cuts out a lot of cruft.
My point was that authors and articles spend less time trying to write an engaging article and more time trying to shove SEO keywords and questions into articles. It ruins the article and makes it something not worth reading.
Reader mode is great but if the substance isn't there then it's all for naught.
I use it quite often. Chills the eyes when reading. Standardized font(size) and design make this bearable.
I really agree - I've stepped away from reading so much of what's online because it's all clickbaity junk with no substance. I'm not sure where to look for actual content to put in my reader. But I'm making forays.
Unfortunately a lot of sites have ditched support for RSS over the past 10 years requiring tedious work arounds if you can get it to work at all.
I hope it can make a comeback but I'm dubious.
I use it, as both a reader and a publisher, but rss (in particular) could do with an update.
Wait until I show them my PHP BB.
I use RSS but as far as I'm concerned, Lemmy is better, because it is categorized and ranked.
I use RSS for sites where I want to read every update. That typically means serial comics; dev-blogs of indie games; other infrequent blogs; and some infrequent youTube channels (I don't visit youTube other than via my RSS feeds);
Whereas I use Lemmy and other sites for skimming and browsing, and discovering new things.
lemmy also supports rss! your inbox can generate a rss feed. Also communities have feeds that update whenever someone posts on them. For example for c/technology sorted after active: https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xml?sort=Active
Google Reader was my goto and when they killed that I tried a bunch of others and none quite hit the same. Gutted that one hit the Google graveyard.
Classic Embrace-Extend-Extinguish move.
I was trying to find a solution to have all the news sources I care about in a single app. Then I remembered RSS and was able to do that very easily. I use self-hosted Miniflux and just use that as pwa when on my phone. Ridoculously lightweight and very awesome. I also setup Readeck (a Pocket alternative) where I push longer articles for when I'm up for reading more instead of just checking the latest news. I love it
I frankly hate those posts in which people tells me what I should do. Just write "Hey, look, this is cool!" and let me judge it and decide.
Same. I'm guessing the clickbait algorithm favors the "should" phrasing, which is annoying.
I did this too recently. Highly recommend.
I've been interested in trying out RSS again but I don't want to self-host. Can anyone recommend a RSS client (hosted, local, or whatever) that they like?
It can be as simple as just putting an app on your phone. I use feeder which is fine. Pretty bare bones, but in that way it's easy to learn and use.
I've also been meaning to try out an app called Nunti, which I heard about a while ago from this Lemmy post. It claims to be an RSS reader with the added benefit of an (open source and fully local) algorithm to provide some light curation of your feed. It looks interesting, but I haven't actually tried it out yet because I'm still deciding whether I want any algorithm curating my feed, even one as transparent as Nunti's. It's also only available through F-Droid right now, which is a bit of a barrier to entry.
The fact that it's only available through fdroid is actually a good thing in my opinion.
If it's open source, you could perhaps tinker with the algorithm. My main desires for rss feeds are:
- a way to filter out fluff affiliate link articles (e.g., 8 best gadgets on sale for prime day)
- a way to cluster articles on the same topic (i don't really need to read 5 articles about the same news item)
Any clue if nunti could do that?
Thunderbird has RSS integrated, which could be quite neat once that synchronizes.
If you’re on iOS, feeeed is kinda slick :)
I needed this, thanks! For the lazy, it’s here.
I've had some decent times with inoreader.
inoreader seems very ergonomic, thanks!
I used Feedly since Google Reader was shut down. Then 1.5 years ago, as Feedly was getting more paywalls and AI-crap, I switched to Newsblur, and have been a happy user ever since. I love its Intelligence Trainer that lets me hide posts with certain tags/authors/keywords.
Unlimited hosted-by-them Newsblur costs 36 USD / year. It has a FLOSS version and a more limited free hosted-by-them version, but the 2.5 GBP / month was worth the QoL increase for me.
On android i like ReadYou on fdroid
there are some publically available FreshRSS instances that you can make an account with, I personally use hostux. you can access it with the browser and any apps that support FreshRSS (in my case, Read You or Capy Reader on Android, and sometimes RSS Guard on desktop).
I prefer the Feedbro browser extension in Firefox. I think it is available for chrome/edge as well.
never stopped using rss/atom with ttrss 💪
I am using RSS and I love it
It's 2004 again lol The good ol days.
RSS is back. Forums are back. It's brilliant. Now I just need Musk and Zuck and Bezos to be no longer relevant to anybody's lives.
We gotta bring back usenet servers and dare I say IRC and Telnet
SSH over telnet but IRC is still alive and kicking
I just saw this article last week! I love RSS feeds and set up a bunch through my work email outlook client. They been there since like 2010 (yes I still have the same job...) and I barely touch them these days due to time, and some sites died, but it's still the quickest way to catch up on the news you want. Wherever I saw this posted last I saw a recommend for FeedFlow and have been messing with that phone app to try and make some ultimate new feed for myself.
Shot out to freshness, been using that for years! Self hosting it
FreshRSS for those playing along at home...
For iOS, this one doesn't collect any data. It's pretty barebones, but also free. It nags you a bunch at first but eventually stopped
NetNewsWire is the iOS and macOS app for RSS. It has been around since RSS started out and is now open source.
It doesn't have keyword filters or at least I can't find them.
My local news sites block RSS because they paywall all their articles to force you to buy a newspaper or pay twice as much for online access.
I skip the RSS and just buy the local paper.
Nice webpage there sir. Material for MkDocs right?
Wait until this guy gets to 2012, and discovers Flipboard.....