How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#201

Post by TheFlyingFish » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 11:17 AM UTC

singpolyma3 wrote: post #148

mathieudombrock wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.

Also you can literally insert ads into the feed content

Feed aggregators (inoreader, feedly) make this difficult, though. One request may end up serving any number of end users, so you can't personalize ads the same way.

Good, you might say, and I wouldn't disagree, but Google et al sure would.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#202

Post by onel » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

throwaway63467 wrote: post #48

The 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…

The main reason for that is because most of the interactions back then were based on Open standards: rss, email, etc. If we want to get back to that. We need to start using Open standards for all things: chat - signal, social media - activity pub / at proto, news/blogs - rss, long messages - email A public open standard solves most of the problems of walled gardens

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#203

Post by inigyou » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 11:41 AM UTC

pwdisswordfishq wrote: post #169

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop. I’m surprised you can see anything through those rose coloured glasses. the most charitable interpretation is that the internet used to more exclusively cater to your interests specifically, which i’m sure is true. try asking most women about the internet then vs now. there are still scumbags, and one could reasonably argue that they’ve go…

> can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop Compared to the torrent of AI slop today, it was.

This is true.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#204

Post by pmdr » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 12:12 PM UTC

ramijames wrote: post #115

I'm still so angry about this. RSS was EVERYWHERE and then it just wasn't anymore. It was so useful and such a nice, advertising-free way, of using the internet.

Nowadays you have to get past Cloudflare to even see headlines.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#205

Post by jerojero » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #81

throwaway63467 wrote: post #48

The 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…

There's more to ads than banners and unskippable videos.

I bet if you open YouTube, even with Adblock and sponsorblock, you'll see ads. "Tech" channels are nothing but ads because all they do is present products for people to buy.

Even channels that do legos are ad channels.

YouTube itself has become a platform for serving videos that are advertisement at their core. These videos are popular, get good engagement, pay the content creators and come in cheap for brands. This style of "journalism" extends to many other platforms.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#206

Post by casey2 » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 12:39 PM UTC

RSS peaked in 2005 [1] so unless google has been killing it for that long the waning popularity is genuine. Or at least forced by a broader industry push for locked down feeds.

[1] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=rss%2520reader&date=all&...

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#207

Post by HenryMulligan » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #177

firatsarlar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Huh? I use Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin and it blocks ads just fine. I concur regarding Chrome though and try to avoid it.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#208

Post by scantron4 » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #127

jfengel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also .001% of the content there is now. The Internet of 2000 was microscopic. Now everyone can create content, without any of the friction of hosting it. The vast majority of it is crap, but that was always the case. The main difference between now and 30 years ago is that the Internet is vastly more diverse. It isn't just other CS majors any more. Now everyone gets to wade in the vast crap pool looking for…

> It isn't just other CS majors any more. Hey, that's not fair! It also had nine year olds who bought a book about HTML and made shitty sites on Geocities!

I WAS THIRTEEN

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#209

Post by Funes- » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

throwaway63467 wrote: post #48

The 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…

Ads have destroyed our culture. Just look at the fundamental change YouTube underwent in 2012 when they made all users eligible for monetization. It turned it into junk/infomercial TV.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#210

Post by zdunn » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

wildzzz wrote: post #74

dabinat wrote: post #29

I 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.

Because you can't serve ads as nicely over RSS

Aren't the ads already on the webpage? If the RSS contains snippets of the pages and I have to navigate to the page to view the article, then I see your ads.

Also, can't the ads be a part of the feed just as nicely as the articles? What's stopping publishers from inserting ads as items in the feed?