this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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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.

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[–] toofpic 113 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago

Sigh, that was my wake up call to not rely on google products.

[–] vinniep 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SlopppyEngineer 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] jagoan 91 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] realitista 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes RSS came back strong in my life after Reddit and Twitter shit the bed.

[–] AtariDump 11 points 10 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I went with a self-hosted FreshRSS instance, it has its issues but it works well with the client apps I use.

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[–] nutsack 46 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

people don't do RSS anymore because websites don't do posts. everything is on some shitty proprietary social media shithole

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[–] FrankTheHealer 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

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

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[–] FauxPseudo 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

When I left Reddit I fired up Feedly and did some house cleaning. Still looking for more decent feeds.

Here are some of mine: XKCD, Nature, Slashdot, New Scientist, FactCheck, Neurologica, Science Based Medicine

What else you got?

[–] thru_dangers_untold 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

All youtube channels have their own feeds, but they're not obvious to find. The first part of the URL looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

Go to the channel's home page and search the page source for "channel_id=" (with a long string of numbers and letters after it, often starting with a "U") then paste the ID after the equal sign. The channel id looks something like this: UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg

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[–] panicnow 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

arstechnica has a premium RSS for $3 a month that has no ads. I love it.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I started using RSS during the summer. It filled a hole after I quit reddit, since I used to get a lot of my news from the subreddits for my city and my province. There's also the on-going bickering between Meta and Canadian lawmakers/news media groups which means I see way less articles on social media than I used to. Honestly, after adding a couple local news outlets to my RSS apps, I feel better informed than ever before, and I spend a lot less time arguing with people on reddit. Win-win if you ask me.

Anyone looking for good RSS readers, I use Feeder on my phone (Android-only), Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform), and I also use the RSS widget of the Renewed Tab addon for Firefox. Both apps I use work locally, and have the ability to fetch full articles in-app (the addon just opens the articles in Firefox).

Something also worth mentioning: you can often find RSS feeds by checking the page's source (on Firefox: right-click and "View Page Source") and using Ctrl+F to search, there's usually a URL somewhere. Keywords to search for: "feed", "RSS", "xml", "atom". For example, if I go to this community's page on lemmy.world, I can Ctrl+F "feed" on the page source to find https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xml

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[–] udon 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The problem with most rss readers IMHO is that they lack a decent filter function. ttrss had great filters, but I stopped using it when they switched their dev process (I think to docker at the time, which I couldn't use with my hoster). Now using rss guard, not too happy but surviving.

RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise. If you can filter only what you care about, great. Otherwise it's just information overload.

[–] anarchy79 10 points 10 months ago

RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise

I think you nailed it there. Curating is too much of a hassle.

[–] snek 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because if you don't save shit in your RSS feed, you might never ever again find it using google or other search engines.

[–] Plopp 21 points 10 months ago

What, search? Listen, you don't actually want that, you want recommendations from our amazing algorithm and AI based on overall connections between topics and trends and other very complex things. You don't even know what it is you're looking for, but we do, so here are some results that generate revenue for us. //Google

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I use an RSS reader but I'm just using it as a clunky reddit client for my city's subreddit 😅

[–] NightAuthor 10 points 10 months ago

I might try that, city subreddit is a huge resource

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[–] Chocrates 17 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Anyone got a favourite open source rss reader? So far I am mostly finding stuff with subscriptions. Even though many have a free plan i'd like to try to find an open one first

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I've recommended these a couple of times in this thread, but I use Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform) and Feeder on Android. Both are FOSS and load articles locally, so no account/subscription required.

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[–] AllYourSmurf 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Check out FreshRSS. You can self host, so if you have a home server, this will do the trick. Use your favorite reader app that can connect to it.

I get the subscription fatigue. I’m currently paying for Inoreader because I haven’t fully cut over to FreshRSS. It has good tools that are worth it for many, but all those subscriptions add up fast.

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[–] Katana314 16 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.

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[–] harmsy 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

RSS was great. I've still got a deep grudge over the removal of Live Bookmarks from Firefox. That was how I kept up with the various webcomics I was reading at the time. All I had to do was just check on all my little orange drop-down menus to see if any new posts were up, and I was golden. Now I have to keep extra tabs open and try not to bury them under all the other tabs I open up and forget about. >_<

[–] deranger 12 points 10 months ago

RIP Google Reader too, a perfectly functional app Google killed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

There's Live Bookmarks extensions for Chromium and Firefox

FF: Live Marks Chromium: Live RSS Bookmarks

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I want to get into RSS but all the apps I've tried have been lacking. I want to subscribe to the Factorio blog and be able to see their GIFs/videos directly but so far no app has been able to do that. Either they don't load any images (wtf?) or they just load a static preview that I then have to click to actually play. Does anyone know of an RSS app that can load GIFs/videos automatically?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

That seems like a lot of work. It would be easier for me to write a bot that will post every article from my favorite sites to [email protected]. Then I could have another bot summarize it in the body.

Oh, wait…several people already have. :-/

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

I use Feeder on Android, it's open source.

[–] anarchy79 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I've tried so many times. I went ahead and checked out feedly right now just to have them change my mind, and they failed miserably. You run into paywall issues right away, they don't list pretty major newspapers I would assume to have rss, and adding something like business insider or the independent gives you so much dung mixed with the things you are actually interested in.

Let's say I'm into business, but don't want car related news? What if I'm into investing yet don't want to hear about Trump?

If there was something like "more like this"/"less like this" function, then maybe, but just at a glance, one of many, I don't see how it could present me with the info I want in the structure I want.

Global events and news
Economical trends on both macro and micro level for specific domains
Exclude entertainment, sports, fashion, drama
Update every hour
Total headlines max 30 per day
Max visible 7 at a time.

I've tried, and it's not worth the hassle even trying to set that up. For me, at least.

Adding any RSS feed is like getting an information enema with raisins sprinkled in.

[–] omnomed 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

What shit app were you trying to use, get feeder and add the proper topic specific rss if you want to categorize like "business". I never even get the time to read through all the news because there are literally hundreds of articles being added to the feed daily.

And AntennaPod for your podcast needs.

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[–] Godric 13 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Got Feeder to try RSS on my PC based on this post, added a bunch of cool sites, was enjoying it, and then quickly got smacked in the face with "upgrade to view more posts".

Anyone recommend an RSS reader that doesn't have stupid "fuck you, pay me" limitations?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

https://www.inoreader.com/ used it for years it's great!

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Oof. The real Feeder is a FOSS Android app, get it on F-Droid.

On PC, ~~there are two~~ Firefox plugin~~s, one to bring back "live bookmarks" (RSS feeds), and one to bring back the radio-waves-like icon in the address bar of sites with RSS feeds available. Let me check...~~

Edit: It's just one plugin, Livemarks. If you put the bookmark it creates into the bookmarks toolbar, then it becomes a drop-down menu of the headlines/RSS items. 👍

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[–] cley_faye 12 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The number of sites that still supports RSS is impressive when you think about how niche it is right now. I was surprised when I saw some big comics sites had it.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Google Reader died more than a decade ago? oh my jeebus, I feel ooooooooollllld

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I never had a good way to ingest info, but i setup a self-hosted FreshRSS instance a few months ago and it’s completely changed how i consume information for the better. I spend a lot less time scrolling through shit that never interested me much in the first place

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I still use it every day to access new content from my YouTube channels that I watch since I don't have a Google account and for tech news.

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[–] 1lya 10 points 10 months ago

What if I told you that I have never used Google to view RSS news feeds? It seems to me that these stereotypes about people’s attachment to Google services only take place somewhere in the USA and Europe.

[–] RememberTheApollo 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I loved RSS feeds. But I’ve given up on them. And it would seem so have many of the sites I used to frequent. I read RSS offline, so right there I have a problem as the vast majority of RSS apps expect an internet connection. Sites used to write content in such a manner that it was easily readable in RSS, now they don’t. The decline in popularity of RSS has meant that after I get comfortable with an app it stops being updated and no longer works as the developer decides it’s not worth keeping up. Sites make RSS feeds harder to find, if they even have one.

I

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

Assuming you read RSS offline on mobile, Feeder has an option to fetch full articles and stores them for offline reading. It's FOSS and actively-maintained, having received an update just last week.

I've never encountered a site I wanted to follow that didn't have RSS, but I wholly agree it's often needlessly complicated to find the feed links.

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[–] gndagreborn 9 points 10 months ago

I'm gonna shill for FreshRSS and Feed Me. Been a fantastic combination so far.

Self hosting FreshRSS allows me to curate shit I care about. Even better, it's private aggregation. Sometimes though, I miss the conversation around these topics. For that, Lemmy exists.

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