Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.
Unfortunately, RSS is no longer how most of us consume “content.” (Google famously killed its beloved Google Reader more than a decade ago.) It’s now the norm to check social media or the front pages of many different sites to see what’s new. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: Especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms choosing what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the internet. Here’s a primer on what RSS can (still!) do for you, and how to get started with it, even in this late era of online existence.
Google Reader shutdown has completely changed the way I was ingesting information. It was so convenient, I always had 2-3 days worth of articles, web comics and news for reading.
Another problem was that many sites shifted to providing only parts of articles instead of full versions, and it was still the time when I wasn’t always online to finish reading.
The Google Reader shutdown hit me hard also. They offered all of the features in a really great app and many of the competitors shut down in their wake, so when they exited the scene, it left a huge hole.
I jumped to Feedly and have been using that ever since. After they killed reader, I’ve been very hesitant of using any new Google product, expecting and seeing them all inevitably die.
Another problem was that many sites shifted to providing only parts of articles instead of full versions
That annoys me so much, that is the number one reason why I use Feeder more than Feedly nowadays (I manually keep them synced, Feedly is multiplatform and Feeder sadly isn’t) as it has a feature to download the page and use their native app view, so much better than going to the site (even with Ublock I’d rather not go unless I want to comment or see comments, which sadly isn’t a thing for most of the sites nowadays).
Reddit and Twitter were my RSS reader replacement. But then they shot themselves in the foot. Mastodon is not there yet. Lemmy is almost there, but still missing the non techy communities.
Yes RSS came back strong in my life after Reddit and Twitter shit the bed.
I’m reading some /r/hfy stories. Since I no longer get notifications for reddit pm, I have replaced it with the RSS Feed for “posts by user xxx”. RSS also works like a subscription on royal roads, the alternative that a lot of writers switched to.
Works perfectly well, I’m very happy with it.
I’ve never left RSS. Went to Feedly like a lot of people. These days I’m using a self-hosted instance of miniflux because I got sick of Feedly making “enhanced” feeds and then not letting me get to the real RSS feed anymore.
I went with a self-hosted FreshRSS instance, it has its issues but it works well with the client apps I use.
NetNewsWire on iOS and the Mac. Pretty great, and it’s FOSS to boot. Still working on a decent front end on other OSes, the web client is okay-fine but could be better.
What is this enhanced feed feature of Feedly that I have never heard of? Is it a premium feature of something?
I ran into a couple of them but the most notable was reddit (before the APIpocolypse). If you try to subscribe to the RSS feed of a sub it will ignore your request and ask you to sign in to Reddit instead. It then uses the API instead of the RSS feed and reports your reading habits back to Reddit.
people don’t do RSS anymore because websites don’t do posts. everything is on some shitty proprietary social media shithole
I have a really intense desire to nibble an attractive mans toes.
Even stranger I have a need to tell someone about it.
Congratulations to you, I guess?
I’m confused if you’re mocking op or this is actually some challenge you’re doing
I live a life of whimsical nonsense and was probably horny for a moment so just blurted out what was on my mind. I find it amusing the number of downvotes I got.
I don’t know why you’re being downloaded I think this is an important post
RSS is fucking amazing.
I use Feeder on Android and QuiteRSS on my laptop and desktop. I use it for everything from local news and tech news, to YouTube subscriptions. It’s great. Forget social media with enshitification and profit driven motives. RSS is all you need.
Feeder is a perfectly functional RSS reader for Android, and the only updated and straight forward one on F-Droid when I decided to set up my feeds, and an app I’ve seen suggested on Lemmy several times when there’s mention of RSS…but why doesn’t it have groups? I’ve got my general news mixed with tech news, cluttered in between the rest of it - it does have grouping and it’s called “tags”
this thread made me re-check and there are some new options in there and at least one will let you group the feeds: Read You
EDIT: dumb take
