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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?

#41

Post by jayd16 »

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...

Lets face it, the ideals are great but RSS kinda sucks. Its stable, its sturdy and maybe this is my own ignorance but I can think of a lot of missing features the average user would expect.

I don't think there's a standard practice for caching, serving deltas, or anything other than polling the feed. Keep in mind I mean standard as in any generic reader will implement it.

There's no cross application protocols to share subscriptions, progress, already-read, or any other kind of state across apps.

Privacy is a problem. The feeds are generic and public. OAauth could probably be implemented into clients these days such that a generic feed reader could access private content but there are no standards for it.

Monetization is a huge problem. No one wants to scrape pay walls and no one wants to serve free content. DRM sucks but content providers are going to demand it so it should be integrated.

I'm fairly surprised I haven't seen a crypto-wallet integrated RSS standard with these features. How did that not make the cut for crypto ideas?

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

#42

Post by bundleunbundle »

no_wizard wrote: post #22

Its strongest hold is definitely in Podcasting. Right now, thats basically all a podcast feed is, its an RSS feed. This is largely due to the hands off nature that Apple had with podcasting for so long, though Spotify[0] is trying to wrestle this control over the ecosystem in moving away from publishing an open RSS feed. Its very much alive in this way though, at least for now, and I think its important to recognize…

Great read thanks!

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

#43

Post by someweirdperson »

It is dead and has been replaced by atom, which at least has a valid media type!!1!

I guess the biggest problem with either is that it can be used both to deliver content, best consumed by some news reader, and it can help to just discover updates, without actually providing the content.

It seems to aspire to the former, with all added complexity involved, especially for the consumer. However, what would be needed most is the part that helps with discovery.

Imagine a browser that automatically picks up all feeds it comes across, and presents the user with a facebook-like timeline of interesting items as references to the original sources. With no activity required, but simple options "show less of this and more of that". Of course, why would a browser want to create that kind of user-engagement.

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

#44

Post by sacrosanct »

I curated a huge .OPML file that I've been using for a decade now with no problems. I cherry picked the RSS feeds by first visiting the blog, then hunting for the feed either by using an addon or using Firefox's (now defunct) RSS feed button. Currently there's 500 blogs added. I avoided feeds which were mere summaries of the blog's post, and contained the full post so I could read it entirely. No ADs. No tracking. No sidebar distractions, just pure information.

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

#45

Post by snoopy_telex »

jayd16 wrote: post #41
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...

Lets face it, the ideals are great but RSS kinda sucks. Its stable, its sturdy and maybe this is my own ignorance but I can think of a lot of missing features the average user would expect. I don't think there's a standard practice for caching, serving deltas, or anything other than polling the feed. Keep in mind I mean standard as in any generic reader will implement it. There's no cross application protocols to sha…

RSS is s data interchange standard. "subscriptions, progress, already-read, or any other kind of state across apps" is well out of scope of a data interchange format.

You may claim that the data interchange format is useless without those features being implemented on the app side, however it doesn't mean the data interchange format is flawed.

That said, pretty much any RSS app does what you describe. I use Feedly across many devices, and it's all synced. The other primary RSS powered app I use is Apple Podcasts which also syncs those states between all my devices.

Feeds being "public" isn't an issue. I pay for many feeds provided by creators on patreon. These are behind token based auth. I also have a few completely custom feeds that are behind http basic auth and generate on demand completely custom content.

Monetization for public feeds also doesn't seem like an issue. I get ads embedded into some feeds, and others like Ars just do snippets and I click though to the main site and see the ads there.

Why would crypto help at all here?

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

#46

Post by konart »

emptyparadise wrote: post #27
trynewideas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS readers that manage mailing lists: Inoreader: https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2020/02/declutter-your-inbox-... Newsblur: https://blog.newsblur.com/2016/07/01/newsletters-in-your-new... (open source and self-hostable) Feedly: https://feedly.com/i/pro Also, Kill the Newsletter ( https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ ) converts newsletters to RSS feeds, and is open source/self-hostable.

I really should get around to self-hosting my RSS reader.

https://github.com/miniflux/v2 does well for me

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

#47

Post by illuminerdy »

I stopped using Google News once I realized they literally won't even let you add certain sites to your feed for no other reason than politics.

So I now use Inoreader to curate my own news feed from RSS feeds as well as many sites that don't have a feed. Instead of spending time blocking or deleting "approved" news sources that are the definition of fake news these days, I just add any sites that I come across that I feel are useful for information gathering.

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

#48

Post by vidanay »

jayd16 wrote: post #41
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...

Lets face it, the ideals are great but RSS kinda sucks. Its stable, its sturdy and maybe this is my own ignorance but I can think of a lot of missing features the average user would expect. I don't think there's a standard practice for caching, serving deltas, or anything other than polling the feed. Keep in mind I mean standard as in any generic reader will implement it. There's no cross application protocols to sha…

Damn happy none of those "features" exist

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

#49

Post by hammyhavoc »

jayd16 wrote: post #35
jonathankoren wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fever API is implemented in many apps.

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

#50

Post by hammyhavoc »

bundleunbundle wrote: post #6
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...

100% agree that it does it what it does beautifully but it seems to me like there's little to no stewardship around it, and no one actively making sure that it can work with new types of content and provide a viable channel to professional publishers (in effect looking after both sides of the RSS "marketplace".) Search engines are part of the puzzle for sure, but would love to see more transparent/open source recomme…

New types of content? Like what?
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