It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

That's a gross oversimplification. Lots of content isn't worth anything but some is. If you're a stock trader, for example, certain timely information is well-worth paying for. And there's a market for that served by Bloomberg, Thomson-Reuters, and so on.

The term "content" obscures the differences by suggesting its all interchangeable. That's certainly in the interest of the Googles and Facebooks of the world: When all content is equal, no content creator has any negotiating power.

But there's a distinction between a multi-month investigative report and hastily paraphrased rewrite at some fly-by-night website intent on capturing algorithmic ad dollars.

Pricing news content is hard because it has a different value to different people and often the value is only apparent after it has been consumed.

It's worth asking how much we will pay for reports on political corruption, civic injustice, and so on. If the price for content is $0, the signal to noise ratio will disappear.

If I make an opinion prematurely I see myself defend it while familiarizing myself with the topic. I go blind to what contradicts it and remember only what fits my preconceived ideas. This is why I try to avoid it.

Perhaps other people (you) are able to suspend their uninformed opinion but I highly doubt it.

But okay, I will at least try (and no doubt fail) to describe the taste of the soup before you try it:

The issue is that it gets so much better if you have a lot of subscriptions (sorted by pubDate) The experience is much like a search result but with everything you enjoy mixed together.

There are no notifications of course since new articles happen much to frequently. In stead you gaze over the headlines periodically and open a few articles (in the browser)

Because there are few people as interested in (the proverbial) antique silver thimbles as you those articles need to float to the top or live in a different folder.

I for example one time crawled a bunch of fortune 500 websites looking for feeds. The flood of press releases really gave me a sense what is going on. Lots of boring corporate speak but at least every page described a serious effort to accomplish something.

You really need to subscribe to every remotely interesting small weblog you can still find so that you can at least bother to read the headlines. The small blog really needs you. This is where the original content happens.

You will also find out that the rest of the web is a giant echo chamber with thousands upon thousands of websites recycling the same topics.

Trump is no doubt important enough to have thousands of articles written about a single sentence he spoke.

David Bowie was no doubt important enough to have a millions articles about his death.

Think of the bizarre number of topics handed down to us by Rupert Murdoch?

But is it what I should be filling my head with?

I tried lots of online aggregators. Around 1000 subscriptions they stopped working. How do I get my data out?

Ill just put https://danielmiessler.com/feed/ on the pile and ill be checking his headlines for years to come. Until the death of the website or the end of my existence. It's a perfect relationship. No need for a middle man - no thank you.