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In this quest for independence from centralized social media, I'm wondering...does anyone still use RSS?

For any of you who do, what is the experience of using RSS in 2023? Are there any RSS apps that are pleasant to use? Sites (other than big content publishers) that publish a feed?

(Please share for visibility if you have followers who might have experience to share.)
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to anjou

Janet Logan 🏳️‍⚧️
Janet Logan 🏳️‍⚧️
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I've mostly seen RSS on webcomics and a few blogs. I definitely still use it to follow a few sites. I primarily use Feeder (feeder.co) with Chrome. The sites I follow are mostly #LGBTQIA and #trans news sites, and a couple of webcomics in the same vein.
#trans #lgbtqia
in reply to anjou

Éibhear 🔭
Éibhear 🔭
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I'm a big fan of #RSS. My feed-reader is polling upwards of 200 feeds, ranging from national newspapers to blog sites to press releases. I don't use it for status updates (e.g. #ActivityPub) or issue-tracking (e.g. GitHub) -- that would overwhelm my feed-reader. Probably.

I use a self-hosted web-based feed-reader called commafeed, which allows me to catch up on my news from any device.

I would love more use of RSS by governments, particularly for announcing new initiatives or updating debate timetables.
#activitypub #rss
in reply to Éibhear 🔭

Bradley :smugcat:
Bradley :smugcat:
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@eibhear @tchambers I miss Google Reader. My RSS consumption never recovered after it closed.
@Éibhear 🔭 @Tim Chambers
in reply to Bradley :smugcat:

Éibhear 🔭
Éibhear 🔭
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After Google Reader's demise, I moved to feedly and missed Reader.

After a while, as I observed how other consumed their news, how business models around news were developing, and how some governments (including "democratic" governments) were "[collecting] it all", I came to feel that centralised databases of people's news reading habits were a little dangerous. Unless you go into a newsagency and buy a newspaper, there's no way to read news anonymously, and there's so much we can learn about people by analysing what news they read.

I'm happy to use commafeed, with it's 2012-like UI, because only I can access the logs of what news I read.
in reply to Éibhear 🔭

mathew
mathew
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@eibhear That reminds me that this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the first #RSS feed of the European Commission. Took me 6 months of wrangling with their lawyers. We also launched a user-customisable #XML feed generator.

I'd buy a cake and some candles, but those feeds are long gone now, so perhaps a memorial service for the #openweb would be more appropriate.
#openweb #rss #xml @Éibhear 🔭
in reply to mathew

Éibhear 🔭
Éibhear 🔭
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#RSS seems to me to be the best way to promote citizen participation for governments: those who want to but aren't professional administration-watchers would become aware soonest with RSS.
#rss
in reply to Éibhear 🔭

Wromey
Wromey
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@eibhear My feed-reader sits in a freedombox.

https://www.freedombox.org/demo/

FreedomBox - Personal Server at Home

FreedomBox is a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy.
FreedomBox
@Éibhear 🔭

Éibhear 🔭 reshared this.

in reply to anjou

Gerard Cunningham ✒️
Gerard Cunningham ✒️
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Feedly.
And technically, every podcast.
in reply to Gerard Cunningham ✒️

rateexportpilot
rateexportpilot
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@faduda is feedly still good? The only reason I stopped using it was because I was using Twitter more. Would definitely go back if it were still working well.
@Gerard Cunningham ✒️
in reply to rateexportpilot

anjou
anjou
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@rateexportpilot @faduda I downloaded it today and gave it a whirl and found the UI to be...pretty unintuitive. It advertises a dark mode on Android, but it doesn't respect the system dark mode preference, and I couldn't actually find anywhere to toggle it in the UI.
@Gerard Cunningham ✒️ @rateexportpilot
in reply to anjou

Gerard Cunningham ✒️
Gerard Cunningham ✒️
• •
@rateexportpilot
Probably I've grown used to it and stopped seeing the bugs. It filled the gap when GReader was killed off, and I've never had any reason to change.
That said, most of the accounts I was following have declined to little or no activity.
@rateexportpilot
Unknown parent

fuomag9
fuomag9
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@neil I’ve stopped using one because websites stopped supporting it
@Neil Brown
Unknown parent

fuomag9
fuomag9
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@neil my solution to RSS is mastodon bots, as they allow interaction with people who saw the same content and are easier to integrate with :sparkles_pink:
@Neil Brown
Unknown parent

Linecutter
Linecutter
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@John
Use Huginn to process your #RSS feeds (& output them). Also scrapes websites to RSS. Nitter does RSS feeds from Twitter. Mastodon & github do RSS directly. You can get YouTube channel feeds (then filter using Huginn if needed)
Then pull all of that into tr-rss or Newsblur (newsblur.com if you want to try it) & use the training/filtering to refine your flow of information.
Might take a bit of time, but you get your own focused feed.
#selfhosted ideally.
@eibhear @anjou
#rss #selfhosted @Éibhear 🔭 @John Socks @anjou
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