EFF recently pointed out to some RSS feed readers as part of below article:
Hate “The Algorithm?” RSS Is One of the Tools You’ve Been Looking For https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/hate-algorithm-rss-one...
How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
171–180 of 265 posts
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#172The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure everything we had then is still possible but let’s be honest everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. Even the privacy friendly browsers j…
> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…
Popup windows could be easily blocked if you knew how, whilst modern in-page popup modals are much more tedious to deal with.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#173Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.
As someone who was a big fan of Reader and worked at Google at the time (not on G+): I never understood why they didn’t try to put Reader into G+. Like you could imagine getting your RSS feed in your G+ stream. If you didn’t want any social stuff you could just use it as a reader. But it would also give you an easy way to share stuff from your feed. And it might have been useful for those providing RSS feeds to inter…
>As someone who was a big fan of Reader and worked at Google at the time (not on G+): I never understood why they didn’t try to put Reader into G+.
Oh there were many post on HN about the politics of G+ at the time, how meta ( Facebook ) are going to crush them with social graph etc. And G+ was effectively its own little organisation within Google. I remember there were something about RSS they didn't want. But I guess I have to dig up my bookmarks to find it.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#174Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.
The mainstream ended up using social media to solve the problem RSS had already solved years earlier… it just had poor marketing. A lot of people do use RSS without realizing it, via podcasts.
>A lot of people do use RSS without realizing it, via podcasts.
A lot of people were using Google Reader without ever knowing what RSS was all about. And when Google reader was gone, they stopped using it, Facebook then taken the newsfeed over.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
It's not just a better user experience. It also addresses the security issues. Blocking ads will also prevent malware scripts, unscrupulous information collection, and deceptive virus infection messages. I've got friends who've been infected because they believed the popup that told them their computer had a virus, and they needed to click the link to remove it.
Blocking ads is recommended by CISA. It should really be more mainstream.
Some demographics are heavy ad blockers, 90%+.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#176The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure everything we had then is still possible but let’s be honest everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. Even the privacy friendly browsers j…
> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…
So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors....
But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue?
Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was crea…
So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors.... But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue? Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.
> ad blocker blocker
Manifest v3; Android
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#178I don’t understand why many sites with news updates / blogs don’t offer an RSS feed. Are they expecting me to keep visiting the site over and over to see if there is new content? They’re guaranteeing I’ll never visit their site again. Perhaps they’re expecting people to subscribe to social media accounts or via email, but those both cost money to reach users. RSS is free.
RSS is a free way to reach almost no one.
RSS is a free way to reach content genuinely created for users, not for profit.
Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#179Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
#180RSS is a wonder, but given that it removes any opportunity for ads and monetisation you can see why the powers that be at Google might want to kill it. Still, it lives on but only in our geek circles.
I run my own RSS reader product (feedgrab.net) and one thing I’ve learned is that there are plenty of sites that serve RSS yet block bots from reading it (ie. RSS crawlers!!).
Not sure what needs to happen to make RSS more popular again - there are loads of feed readers and most blog/news sites support it. Maybe it’s just too complicated for the masses? I tried to address this in Feedgrab with a “Discover” approach which I think could help, but I need to put more effort into the directory.
Also, let’s not forget social media’s role in killing it.