I am also still using RSS - Preferably consumed via well-made, native apps on macOS and iOS.
Since Google Reader went down, I am using the self-hosted Coldsweat: https://github.com/passiomatic/coldsweat. It provides a web based aggregator but also can be used to sync native clients.
RSS is undead
81–90 of 276 posts
Re: RSS is undead
#82Does anyone have a good RSS feed reader for Firefox? I don't need to be able to read the actual feed in the reader, I just want a list that'll notify me when a blog I've subscribed to has a new post. "Feeder"[1] looks like exactly what I want, but the requested permissions list is insane. Are there any that don't request to "Access [my] data on all websites"? I've tried a bunch and they all seem to - I guess so they…
thunderbird?
Re: RSS is undead
#83> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead. What a stupid thing to say... All this indicates is that RSS users didn't like those apps. I use elfeed, which has upwards of 500 stars on Github, and it's an Emacs feed…
But a fact is that lots of incompetent site makers do not add RSS feeds to the websites they build. ... Some feeds include javascript and XML readers fail on them. And then there's the Wix or Squarespace or whatnot websites, and they are a total failure (especially because they can't do this RSS thing whereas even Tumblr does it easily). ... I really believe we should somehow certificate programmers and some certain…
I think you are right about the CMS. That's what's happening in my uni for example. I did send an email about the feeds, no response. Thing is, it's so easy to add one, there's no justification to screwing RSS users, even if it was only me. WRT Squarespace and Wix, well, you can't really read those w/o JS anyways, so that's a nice signal for me.
RSS is as much of an edge feature as the silly animations and crappy one page app reditions of what essentially is a glorified blog is an edge feature. But the latter gets you paid more. On the flip side, e.g. at my uni which switched from wordpress sites to a home-grown CMS, departments have a hard time publishing updates now, and people are switching to Facebook or Whatsapp groups instead. I'm lucky that my department chose to use a google group instead, so that I don't have to convince someone to forward FB updates to me.
Just like RSS, JS was nothing else than a useful addition, and WWW existed long before it and its heyday. The current culture of web development is directly user-hostile in many ways, and builds its confidence upon the perceived approval of users, whereas the reality is that that users' approval is just people putting up with what they have at hand with the varying degrees of knowledge they have. I can't keep mailing every website maintainer and ask for a proper website, I just make do. Luckily I can write a script and put it on cron to fetch most important updates for me, but lots of others don't have anything else than word of mouth or facebook, which is just the digital version of the former. The rapport between the web dev and the user is that of submissive bondage, not really a feedback loop and joy.
Re: RSS is undead
#84The article talks about analytics, but under GDPR you will have to have a sign-up wall before you can do any analytics. If someone comes on to your site without signing up then you are not allowed to track their IP address or any other identifying information, and without that you can't do much in the way of analytics.
Re: RSS is undead
#85Does anyone have a good RSS feed reader for Firefox? I don't need to be able to read the actual feed in the reader, I just want a list that'll notify me when a blog I've subscribed to has a new post. "Feeder"[1] looks like exactly what I want, but the requested permissions list is insane. Are there any that don't request to "Access [my] data on all websites"? I've tried a bunch and they all seem to - I guess so they…
There were a couple that used firefox's native live-bookmarks system to register new feeds but I think that was killed off along with the old extension system.
Now they can't handle RSS feeds natively so they need to access webpages to be able to register RSS links. Guess it shows how sacrificing usability for security doesn't necessarily lead to more security.
I'm currently using Brief, and have been using it for quite some time. Still haven't found an alternative I liked. And I guess with the live-bookmarks dead it's harder than ever to switch. I might give Feeder a try.
Re: RSS is undead
#86RSS will never die as long as someone can scrape a website and make their own feed.
Re: RSS is undead
#87This whole "RSS died" narrative illustrates a basic problem with how we understand the internet. Since there's no unified unbiased sort of "index", like GDP, to tell us just what proportion of users on the internet uses RSS anymore, we're stuck having to rely on socially propogated ideas about the state. This leads to all the typical problems with socially defined truth, such as drift as a consequence of incentives (…
Surely Google Reader had numbers that influenced the decision to shut it down?
Re: RSS is undead
#88Pretty funny to see an article like this! For a course that I followed I needed to create a paper about the Internet. I chose the topic of RSS and what has let to its so called "death". What I found is that people used RSS but where not aware of it. Then Facebook became big and that became a hugh source of news for many. Now with the exodus happening at Facebook it makes sense that RSS is becoming popular again. Still, this is only the case for tech-savy users and I don't expect that movement to progress into the mainstream.
Re: RSS is undead
#89I wish we could go back to the old protocols like RSS, email and SMS. They were open and you could use any client you like and they never had problems with walled gardens. Sometime you have to lose your freedom to really value it like RMS said.
Re: RSS is undead
#90This whole "RSS died" narrative illustrates a basic problem with how we understand the internet. Since there's no unified unbiased sort of "index", like GDP, to tell us just what proportion of users on the internet uses RSS anymore, we're stuck having to rely on socially propogated ideas about the state. This leads to all the typical problems with socially defined truth, such as drift as a consequence of incentives (…
Surely Google Reader had numbers that influenced the decision to shut it down?
[deleted]