“We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#31

Post by mdp2021 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

mdp2021 wrote: post #9

Obsolete?! Replaced by what?!?!?!? I think obsolescence implies replacement!

I'm not so sure. Take vhs rewinders for example. VHS cassettes and players were obsoleted by DVDs and DVD players respectively but there is no analogous new tech to the rewinder. It was a dead end. Maybe I'm splitting hairs.

> Maybe I'm splitting hairs

Not enough split, not really hair ;) The rewinder became obsolete, replaced by random access. Your need to seek remained. Your need to watch videos remained, relevant technologies got replaced etc. One's need for "informational pull" remains - there is no dead end.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#32

Post by akvadrako » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

Zealotux wrote: post #25

Now here's a startup idea: generate a RSS feed for any website. $1 a month, $10 if paid annually :o)

https://inoreader.com does that for about that price.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#33

Post by kgran » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

I got the same argument after I asked why there's no more RSS/Atom feed of the news section in my municipality's website. Some positive people tell me that RSS is not dead and it's still everywhere. Unfortunately, especially after modern redesigns, RSS gets dropped as "obsolete technology". The sad thing is that this doesn't only happen to optional websites which I could choose not to follow out of principle like blogs or niche websites on technology and such. Governmental, municipal, local news websites do this, after which I lose easy and convenient access to this relevant information.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#34

Post by dqv » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #18

dqv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those things where I would have expected the opposite in your country vs the US, my country. Here pretty much everything important has an RSS feed. The Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services, even my local news.

The town I live in publishes their updates via their Facebook page. :|

No! Facebook always surfaces news like two weeks after it happens, so you always have to check the individual Facebook pages to get timely updates.

It’s time to move towns ;)

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#35

Post by mdp2021 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #27

mdp2021 wrote: post #9

Obsolete?! Replaced by what?!?!?!? I think obsolescence implies replacement!

RSS is replaced by personalized feeds that people see by logging into specific platforms and participate through the intended user engagement. That is how those companies earn money.

...Getting information through the lens of a virtual secretary which has a sub-animal intellectual size. Apart from all the social and intellectual implications, that is still not a replacement for information update pull.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#36

Post by criddell » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #27

mdp2021 wrote: post #9

Obsolete?! Replaced by what?!?!?!? I think obsolescence implies replacement!

RSS is replaced by personalized feeds that people see by logging into specific platforms and participate through the intended user engagement. That is how those companies earn money.

That isn't usually how NGOs raise money.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#37

Post by b6dybuyv » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

I think the world would be a better place if in these cases, instead of tweeting a rant and then submitting it to HackerNews, the OP took the effort to explain to that NGO why he thought RSS was a great tool and why they should keep using it.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#38

Post by DamnInteresting » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

eloeffler wrote: post #11

Is there a current and well functioning tool that pulls full articles from the links inside most RSS feeds that only publish teasers? When I first discovered RSS for me, I wanted news to read on the road. It was before Smartphones became ubiquitous. Unfortunately most news sites only published a few lines of text per article. Now, I would like to do the same when there is no network coverage. But I still don't know a…

For what it's worth: When I first launched my Wordpress-based website back in 2005, I initially had it set up to post full articles to the RSS feed. Soon, however, a major downside appeared: It became absolutely trivial for other sites to reproduce my content, and they did in droves. My writings appeared all over the web on generic Wordpress sites, usually attributed to other people. After grappling with the problem for a few months I gave up and switched the RSS to only publish intros, and that mostly resolved it.

Sure, it is always possible for a human to copy and paste my articles' text to their CMS, or for someone to write a simple scraper to extract the desired content. But both of those solutions introduce various hassles, and they require a human to fully accept that they are stealing content, which much fewer people are willing to do.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#39

Post by criddell » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #16

mdp2021 wrote: post #9

Obsolete?! Replaced by what?!?!?!? I think obsolescence implies replacement!

I'm guessing they think that social media and a subscription email newsletter are adequate replacements. But they are not.

We can't really know looking in from the outside. Presumably they know how often their newsletters are sent out and how many social media followers they have and how often the RSS feed is pulled.

Re: “We removed the RSS feed since this technology became obsolete”

#40

Post by LocalH » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

b6dybuyv wrote: post #37

I think the world would be a better place if in these cases, instead of tweeting a rant and then submitting it to HackerNews, the OP took the effort to explain to that NGO why he thought RSS was a great tool and why they should keep using it.

Nothing says they didn't do both. Tweeting and getting it on HN both help with public awareness.

Edit: In fact they did, the OP commented below:

>Hi all, OP here, happily surprised to see this on the front page. Apologies for posting it as a tweet. Text below.*

>I've asked the NGO to reconsider their decision, but this isn't about them. It's about a systematic decline in the usage of RSS such that even major human rights organisation don't see it worth the relatively trivial effort to maintain a feed.

>I honestly think we need a concerted campaign to advocate for RSS. To educate people about its benefits and how to use it. To lobby platforms and websites to adopt RSS and champion notable one's who do. RSS is the back-to-the-future technology we need to keep up with the world in a private, decentralised and sanity-respecting way. If anyone agrees, get in touch and let's do something?