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.
I seem to remember RSS’s main issue being not really being able to tell “recent” from “popular”.
Showed a whole lot of nothing much, and not very much of the stuff you wanted to see.
It does tend to sort by recent, but to me that’s its strength. It makes no effort to curate the feed, it gives me all the articles from the sources I choose in order and that’s it. So while I still use Lemmy for the “popular”, RSS tends to deliver me deep niche content that may not be popular but is very interesting to me.
And also so much content is overlooked by sites like Reddit and Lemmy, that often it is stuff that’s popular if I post it, but no one’s gotten to it yet. It tends to be more up to date because you don’t have to wait for things to get voted to the front page
I kinda just like going to the site. It doesn’t have to be rss or social media.
If RSS is so great why aren’t people using it? Why isn’t there a dozen readers on the market?
maybe it’s just not that useful and that’s why nobody is using it.
This is a common logical fallacy known as “argumentum ad populum” (appeal to popularity). You equate the popularity of the idea as a basis for determining its validity.
Compare, “if cars are so great, why is everyone still riding horses?”
But it actually makes sense with technology. If you need help, you want there to be a large community and corpus of knowledge to draw from.
Not really. In fact technology is often a great example of good demand but little effort put in to meet it. Open source software is riddled with issues that people are too eager enough to report but not eager enough to fix for everyone . We have an example of Palworld finally filling a niche described in the market for almost 2 decades.
I would argue that you can’t do better for help and support than for old niche technologies and frameworks, because things like that always have a vibrant community of enthusiasts ready and eager to help.
Compare eMacs. Why isn’t everyone using eMacs? It’s basically superpowers for any client you install it on, and it installs on everything. Ridiculously hardcore fanbase, we’re talking original flame wars on Usenet levels supporters.
Usenet, apropos, is quite topical on this matter. You should look it up. Fuck it here’s the robot for ya:
Usenet is a global discussion system where users can post messages and read responses in subject-based forums called newsgroups. It’s decentralized, meaning there’s no central server or authority, and it operates across many different servers worldwide. Users can participate in a wide range of discussions, from technology and science to hobbies and arts. It’s text-based and functions somewhat like a precursor to modern internet forums and social media, but with a more straightforward, less graphical interface.
Original RSS, from back in the day. Still active.
If you’re interested: https://techjury.net/blog/what-is-usenet
I tried to use RSS a decade ago and it was too confusing to set up. I gave up pretty quickly.
Why should I expose myself to be force-fed social media stuff?
