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.Sigh, that was my wake up call to not rely on google products.
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.
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.
Lemmy is almost there, but still missing the non techy communities
Thank god, have you seen how the world is out there? Crazy shit /s
Because if you don’t save shit in your RSS feed, you might never ever again find it using google or other search engines.
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
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?
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
Hang on, do you or anyone else know if it’s possible to add playlists to RSS in this way? There are channels that I overall don’t want to watch but that have a specific playlist I want to follow.
You wouldn’t need that if YouTube actually sent notifications like it’s supposed to. So this will come in handy.
This might be useful for their community posts - is there a seperate feed for them or are they included in the videos feed?
I never see the community posts anywhere except for the home page & on the creator’s page. Which makes it frustrating because I only stay in the subscriptions page - so I only get updates if they upload a video.
This doesn’t include community posts. I haven’t tried finding one tho
arstechnica has a premium RSS for $3 a month that has no ads. I love it.
And full text!
I use Feeder on Android, it’s open source.
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
I can do groups in feeder.
omg, thank you. i just learnt about the “tags” function that I’ve always assumed worked differently without even trying 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.
What is this enhanced feed feature of Feedly that I have never heard of? Is it a premium feature of something?
I went with a self-hosted FreshRSS instance, it has its issues but it works well with the client apps I use.
Which client apps do you use?
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.
people don’t do RSS anymore because websites don’t do posts. everything is on some shitty social media shit hole. to feed you subscribe to is proprietary
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
Thank you! At least someone understands.
I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.
Perhaps I’m just an old 40 year old fart, but the Internet was better before. I miss the 00s and the 10s. Now it’s just paywalls, LLM generated bullshit, and search results from SEO orgies
I’m still finding rather many RSS feeds, though there’s few buttons these days. Ideally, you want something that auto-discovers feeds on a webpage.
Or if they do, it’s not the full article. Which I get, them being in the business of selling ads and all.
This is why I stopped using rss. I fucking hate seeing an headline I’m interested in, clicking to expand and then having to click through to the site to read the article, dismiss the goddam email list overlay, fight with the stupid paywall, and then close the tab out of frustration.
I miss the days of actually reading articles in my rss feed reader.
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.
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.
Read You is another great RSS client for Android
I suggest you give it another try, it can actually do what you’re asking it to do. Sounds like you just added the global feed of crap.
For better results, you typically have to search “<newspaper website> rss” and hope they have decent support. It’s really hit or miss.
For example, the independent that you were asking for, actually has a huge amount of fine tuning you can do. Go ahead and check their link and add the categories you’d like to read about instead catching all that junk you don’t care about:
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.
RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise
I think you nailed it there. Curating is too much of a hassle.
I started fiddling with a self hosted rss thing but never got around to putting the app on my new phone. I might give a different one a try sometime it was kinda basic.
Definitely try “Read You”! It utilises Material You, has a sick UI and the dev is really nice. I think there are a lot of features, but I’ve just left almost everything on default.
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?
https://www.inoreader.com/ used it for years it’s great!
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 technology@lemmy.world. Then I could have another bot summarize it in the body.
Oh, wait…several people already have. :-/
