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Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

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Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#31

Post by walterbell »

It's coming back, thanks to Lire's automagic local caching for offline reading of text and images, https://lireapp.com/

> unlike other RSS feed readers, that either push you into a browser (in-app or otherwise), or depend on third party text parsing services and require you to be online to fetch the full text of one article at a time (which makes it no different from having to click/tap through to a website), in lire, you get your favorite RSS feeds as they should've been. You don't need to click through to any website (though, you do still have the option to, if you really wanted). It takes your favorite partial feeds, does its magic, and converts them in to full feeds, so you don't have to click/tap on those annoying 'Read more' or 'Continue reading' links. Once they're cached, you don't even need to be connected to read your full-text feeds.

It's almost like UUCP-powered Usenet!

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#32

Post by sudobash1 »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #8
metadat wrote: post #2

What about the RSS protocol is lacking and in need of further development? It seems to get the job done. I do agree about discovery in general, it's uncomfortable counting on Google, Microsoft, and Meta / TikTok for content discovery. Thankfully there are some smart folks working on fresh takes on the search engine. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

RSS doesn't work all that well across multiple devices, such as a desktop and a mobile phone. You can subscribe to them on both, sure, but they won't be synced with each other. Apps such as Google Reader and such resolve that problem, but the death of Google Reader really shook a lot of people's trust in RSS, I think. Plus now RSS has to compete with social media feeds, which are where a lot of people are looking for…

I think that is a good thing. For "syncing across devices" to be a server-side feature of RSS, that would require that the server be keeping track of who I am and what I have read. The way the RSS protocol is, it is stateless and may be completely anonymous. Keeping track of the state is (and should be) the application's job.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#34

Post by rcarmo »

It never died. I have kept reading 200-odd RSS feeds for the past ten to fifteen years, and this myth about it being dead keeps coming up every year on HN.

The protocol works and would probably be best cast as "done", which is a concept very little modern technology seems to encompass...

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#35

Post by jayd16 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #9
InvisibleUp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS doesn't work all that well across multiple devices, such as a desktop and a mobile phone. You can subscribe to them on both, sure, but they won't be synced with each other. Apps such as Google Reader and such resolve that problem, but the death of Google Reader really shook a lot of people's trust in RSS, I think. Plus now RSS has to compete with social media feeds, which are where a lot of people are looking for…

Syncing across devices isn't the job of RSS, or any protocol, and certainly not the role of a data format in the case of RSS. State is an application's job.

Ok then we can just phrase it as there's no standard way to sync RSS subs across apps. Point is its a clear user frustration with no easy solve.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#36

Post by AdamGibbins »

emptyparadise wrote: post #20
AdamGibbins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can with NewsBlur: https://blog.newsblur.com/2016/07/01/newsletters-in-your-new...

That's a beautiful website. Thanks for the suggestion.

They're great, been paying them since Google Reader shutdown. Can't fault, great service.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#39

Post by crazygringo »

As a utility API it's just... there. Kind of the same way sitemap.xml is there. It's something developers can use.

As something consumer-facing, it's long since dead. The vast majority of consumers don't usually want a chronological list of all stories from a predetermined list of sources -- they want things like Google/Apple News which recommends stories from everywhere using ML according to their revealed preferences. They want extended comment threads whether on Facebook, Reddit, or the news site itself. They want share functionality and upvotes and Twitter reactions.

RSS was a great first step, but no open protocol can deliver all that. The main problem being that even if you were running your ML models for news preferences locally, everything around upvoting and commenting and mass-sharing can't be decentralized without descending into spam madness and upvote gaming.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dying? Or coming back?

#40

Post by pkrumins »

cauefcr wrote: post #30
pkrumins wrote: post #19

RSS is holding strong. I run a network of news aggregators ( https://TechURLs.com , https://DevURLs.com , and many others) and only two or three news sources out of a hundred have removed their RSS feeds over the last two years.

It would be nice to have an RSS of your aggregator, but i love it already.

That’s the most requested feature and it’s on my todo list. Subscribe to our updates to know when it’s done!
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