While we know that many of you are reading Hackaday via our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, we suspect that most people on the street wouldn’t know that it underlies a lot of the modern internet. [A. McNamee] and [A. Service] have created an illustrated history of RSS that proudly proclaims RSS is (not) dead (yet)!
While tens of millions of users used Google Reader before it was shut down, social media and search companies have tried to squeeze independent blogs and websites for an increasingly large part of their revenue, making it more and more difficult to exist outside the walled gardens of Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. Despite those of you that remember, RSS has been mostly forgotten.
RSS has been the backbone of the podcast industry, however, quietly serving feeds to millions of users everywhere with few of them aware that an open protocol from the 90s was serving up their content. As with every other corner of the internet where money could be made, corporate raiders have come to scoop up creators and skim the profits for themselves. Spotify has been the most egregious actor here, but the usual suspects of Apple, Google, and Amazon are also making plays to enclose the podcast commons.
If you’d like to learn more about how big tech is sucking the life out of the internet (and possibly how to reverse the enshittification) check out Cory Doctorow’s keynote from our very own Supercon.
RSS/Atom->NNTP bridges are extremely nice!
came here via RSS! switched to feedly when Google reader shut down(but I used RSS long before web based readers existed). RSS is still the most democratic way to consume a feed. no algorithms or big tech trying to push their their agenda in there. just straight up chronological stuff you actively and willingly subscribed to. and if feedly starts doing weird things, I simply export the OPML with my subscriptions and I’ll move on to the next RSS reader. that’s a thing when you’re not in a big tech walled garden
Second that. I still “check my feeds” Evey day. I use feedly as well. Seems to work fine. There’s still no substitute for RSS for exactly the reason you said.. I just want to see the content I’m subscribed to, all in one place, with no algorithm manipulating and tracking me.
Same. I use FreshRSS installed locally, and have it pinned as the first tab in my browser. It’s literally up all day, every day, and my server pulls in fresh content for me 24/7. If I’m brutally, honest, if a site doesn’t have an RSS feed, I’m unlikely to return to it.
I’m reading this post because I was warned by my RSS reader
Absolutely! Rather than look at dozens of web sites to find out what’s new, I turn to their RSS feeds (such as http://www.hackaday.com/rss.xml) to find articles of interest. And I certainly don’t want an algorithm or AI deciding what to bring to my attention, and what to obscure.
I got here via RSS, which I use daily, mostly to curate my ludicrous list of webcomics. I publish one as well for my website. Still miss Google Reader (although now I’m a happy customer of Inoreader).
The Old Reader approaches the Google Reader UI. And yes, RSS is a godsend for comics that post irregularly.
I’ve been using Protopage myself since shortly before Google killed off Reader. It’s like 99% as functional too.
Yup. I have your RSS feed on my Protopage. I’m usually visiting your site many times a day, because of that feed.
I live by RSS and have for years. It’s impossible to keep track of all my news sites, Reddit feeds, YouTube channels, etc. without RSS. LONG LIVE RSS!!!
For Firefox the extension “Want My RSS” is wonderful. It restores some functionality Firefox had in the past. You get an RSS icon in the url bar if a page offers a RSS feed, giving you the url of that feed.
Always a mystery to me why they dropped RSS bookmarks, they were awesome and can’t have been that much effort to keep.
Anyone else still using FeedDemon (rss reader) ?
The final version was circa 2009 and it still works like a champ!
Not only that, but it’s driven almost entirely by XSLT, so it’s been possible to tweak the UI and add a few other custom behaviours without having access to the source code.
Hat’s off to Nick Bradbury (the designer/developer) for doing such a helluva job creating a piece of Windows software that’s endured this long.
Right up there with “whips the llama’s ass” in popularity.
Youtube channels also have rss feeds, which is great for making sure you see every upload a specific creator makes.
Since everyone is discussing readers; I use, and am a huge fan of, miniflux. It’s absolutely dead simple. Add a feed, see it’s contents, track read/unread.
I started with Snarfer and have been using RSS ever since.
Let’s not ignore that FreshRSS has built-in scraping ability as well. Incredibly useful for sites with no feed!
Big fan of RSS for many years, It’s such a simple protocol that saves you so much time, it’s a must have! It’s definitely not dead at all!
I have vision disabilities and RSS makes my life a lot easier. I have a single app with the character size and look I want and know by heart. Also no “refuse cookies” popup to deal with or any other annoying popups.
I follow news from numerous topics, github releases, youtubers, Bluesky accounts, podcasts, and so on.
I have setup a FreshRSS server and use the app Read You on Android. All open source, local, I decide what I want, no cookie popups, consume less energy than a page full of adds, etc.
I use Desktop Ticker. Interesting article title scrolls by, I click on it and it brings me here.
Probably more a function of the average readership age being around 65 rather than anything else
Well that and most website stacks have RSS as part of the package or easily added.
I’m an Inoreader user myself, oh, and Newsboat. Came here from Inoreader.
I thank Google for killing Reader. Reader was my only reason for being permanently signed in with my Google account, and killing it started my journey to degooglify my internet use.
90% of my consumption of online media, including Hackaday, is via Feedly.
Wanted to add a rant about NASA breaking their mission specific feeds when they consolidated everything into a single NASA space science blog. But just checked, and I can subscribe to individual missions again. Yay! :)
Been using NetNewsWire for a loooong time.
I’ve been using Newsreader in my terminal for years. It’s so much easier. I have a bunch of news sources, from normal news to tech news, in my terminal. I can just read the headlines and decide if I care enough to read it, without missing something potentially important. I came here from my RSS reader.
Wireguard to your FreshRSS aggregator (and it’s built in web scraper) container then use any reader that supports the greader API. Access your private feed of nearly any website securely (fingers crossed).
RSS is great! However, I’ve noticed over the last few months that many sites are putting “Are you human” or other javascript checks in front of their RSS feeds. That makes the feeds useless for many readers and I’ve given up trying to contact anyone to fix it. Why do so many sites make it so hard to report problems?