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The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

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61–70 of 192 posts

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#62
I still use RSS and it's, in many ways, better than the web stupidity that surrounds us.

The title is misleading.

People who captured the feedreader market, killed the competitors then dropped it did a lot of damage. Maybe deliberately. LESSON: Never trust a big company that relies on advertising.

RSS is a way to escape the nonsense that has come with those, who have no idea what the web can be, but have flooded in and drowned so much in their ignorance and lack of vision.

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#63
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a user’s standpoint, who cares? Just because most people don’t use RSS, doesn’t really matter. Every continuously updated news site and blogging site still supports it - as well as HN. Once I start finding sites that don’t support RSS, then I worry.

I mean, care about whatever you want to. I find it odd that someone who doesn't care posts in an RSS-related thread, but maybe you post about things you don't care about all of the time. But if you care about what content is available, if you care about how people who create work you enjoy are able to make a living about it, if you care about things like who's the president of the US. Then it might behoove you to car…

I mean, care about whatever you want to. I find it odd that someone who doesn't care posts in an RSS-related thread, but maybe you post about things you don't care about all of the time.

Reread my post. There is a difference between caring about whether the majority of users are using RSS and caring about whether publishers are creating RSS feeds.

I specifically said “Once I start finding sites that don’t support RSS then I worry.”

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#64
post #6

A point not mentioned was Dave Winer's refusal to clarify if excerpts in his version of RSS feed needed to be plain text or contain HTML (either as HTML tags or entity encoded). He just kept saying "Keep it simple, people!"

There's no concept of an "excerpt" in RSS, but if we're talking item descriptions, the RSS 2.0 spec says that HTML is allowed and provides examples. http://www.rssboard.org/rss-encoding-examples

[deleted]

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#65
post #60
post #25

I might be biased here as i've built a news aggregator/RSS reader ( https://aktu.io ) but imho RSS was and still is the best way to get news from sources you like. This is so obvious when you compare RSS to social platforms... I mean Facebook was great to share stuff with your friends and get updates but now it's become a huge mess where you get a little bit of everything, you're not even sure you'll ever see all the…

And yet here we are on Hacker News, a social platform for news stories. I honestly have never used a feed aggregator, I used Slashdot, then Reddit, and now a mix of Reddit and HN. Having a filter of some sort is really useful.

Not sure HN qualifies as a social platform, and i got there through RSS anyway :-) Used to love Slashdot, now spending more time on HN too i guess and following some reddits through RSS. I even follow some Facebook pages through RSS so i minimize the time and energy spent on FB.

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#66
post #40
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does hn decide what articles to put on rss?

They're in the same order as the front page

If the /rss query always return the current front page order articles, then I wonder how RSS subscription services work to mark some of them read and some not.

Should probably need to know how RSS actually works.

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#67
Might be useful to some: i realized some time ago (yeah it took me a while...) that most websites that don't have a RSS feed do have a Facebook page. So now i just add those Facebook pages as RSS feeds in my reader and i can follow with RSS those websites that don't have a RSS feed. At least Facebook is useful now.... :-)

Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS

#70
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff that the creator/producer wants syndicated will probably have an RSS feed still. As social media platforms benefit from content lock in as opposed to syndication, the publisher (the platform) has no incentive to offer RSS. I am not particularly bothered by the lack of RSS on social platforms.

I dont know if that’s true. If I could consume Facebook via RSS, I might follow it a bot more. When I wanted to respond or like, I would have to switch to the app.

You just answer your own question? With RSS you'd only use app when you feel like to involve, but social media platforms generally want you to stay in the app, hence no incentives.
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