Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I ditched the algorithm for RSS

joeyehand.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 283 posts

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#111

Post by Dalewyn »

netghost wrote: post #87

The one thing that kills me is the number of "modern" blogs/sites that don't offer rss or atom is really frustrating. If I really like your site, please let me be an engaged reader and let me know when you have something valuable to say again! I've even resorted to adding features in my personal feedreader to seek out common feed locations or APIs that common blogging tools leave on mostly unnoticed.

Back like 15 to 20 years ago when I ran or helped manage some hobbyist websites, I added RSS functionality if only because it was "popular" back then.

I can confidently tell you not a single bloody soul used it, at the height of adoption no less.

If I run a website again I definitely won't bother, it's additional maintenance for a feature nobody uses. The cost-to-benefit ratio makes no sense because the benefit is zero.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#112

Post by subract »

basscomm wrote: post #95
bsnnkv wrote: post #27

I am a big proponent of RSS, but I think that it suffers from a lack of imagination these days, for example, the "quality filter" approach mentioned in this article is not very useful imo. The biggest cost of RSS feed items as a consumer is figuring out whether something is worth reading. A lot of feeds these days don't provide anything useful in the body to make a determination on this, and others just dump the enti…

> The biggest cost of RSS feed items as a consumer is figuring out whether something is worth reading. A lot of feeds these days don't provide anything useful in the body to make a determination on this, and others just dump the entire contents in the body, which means you're wasting a bunch of time reading N% of something until you realize you're not interested in it and it can be skipped. I think a big problem with…

The post proposes a solution to the overload of subscribing to subreddits by subscribing to a search for only the top posts from the subreddit.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#114

Post by EvanAnderson »

nfriedly wrote: post #71
ndriscoll wrote: post #70

Note that (US) governments in particular offer tons of RSS feeds. Want to keep tabs on what Congress is up to? https://www.govinfo.gov/rss/bills.xml Want to follow SEC press releases? https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases.rss In WA state and want to follow bills related to schools? https://app.leg.wa.gov/bi/report/topicalindex/?biennium=2025... The federal government has a big list at https://www.govinfo.gov/feeds .…

Indeed, my local government of Troy, Ohio (~25k population) offers RSS feeds with useful info about things like holiday closures, road construction, christmass tree pickup, etc. https://www.troyohio.gov/RSSFeed.aspx?ModID=1&CID=All-newsfl... There's also a calendar feed with city council meetings and such.

(Hello Troy (and Overfield) neighbor... >smileCivicPlus, the hosting company for Troy's site, does a fairly decent job. (They're rather pricey, in my opinion, though.)

Miami County government uses them to host some of the various County websites. We expose some RSS feeds, send email notifications, etc. The biggest problem with the platform is getting elected officials and departments to see the value in using the platform (versus just posting scanned PDFs, Excel files, and doing things "the old way"). The City has a little easier job because there aren't so many independent elected offices.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#115

Post by xrd »

I've been building a site that automatically shows RSS feeds for the front page of Hacker News.

https://rss.surf

Very interested in hearing feedback!

If you click on the user icon and then login, I'll add you to the list and send you a once a day email with all the RSS feeds it found (see the sample by clicking the link inside the login dialog).

I have been collecting RSS feeds for the last few weeks using it (using self-hosted FreshRSS). Future versions I plan to offer a way to tell it to use your own feed reader, but you are welcome to create an account on my FreshRSS instance and save them there. For example, when I use my mobile phone, I wish it would send it to the Android RSS app Readrops using an Android intent. FreshRSS has a Google RSS Reader (RIP) compatible feed (?) so it works with any phone AFAIK.

I've definitely found it interesting to start my reading using RSS instead of randomly browsing. I am fascinated by who publishes RSS these days. Substack is pretty great that they offer RSS for every site.

I do see that I need an extra "introspection" to curate other articles in the feed. Often I'll subscribe and not have interest in many of the other articles, but if I subscribe it usually means there is at least one other good one. I'm sad the Hindenburg Research RSS feed is ending.

RSS is indeed a fun way to get closer to smart people and see fewer "advertising" posts.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#116

Post by j2kun »

mawise wrote: post #89
j2kun wrote: post #68

One thing I wish I could easily augment with RSS is the ability to send and discover webmentions. I would love to read something in my RSS feed, respond to it, and post a webmention back to the original author. I'd also like to be able to see in the RSS feed what other pages have posted webmentions to the page I'm reading.

I have opinions[1] on Webmentions. It sounds like such a great approach, but it also opens up the original author to hosting mountains of spam and other low-quality comments, and moderation is a lot of work. Arguably, we see the same problem today on sites that let you post comments. [1] https://havenweb.org/2023/04/10/private-comments.html

True, but mostly what I want is to see what other _articles_ are written in response, less about comments.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#117

Post by mxuribe »

j2kun wrote: post #68

One thing I wish I could easily augment with RSS is the ability to send and discover webmentions. I would love to read something in my RSS feed, respond to it, and post a webmention back to the original author. I'd also like to be able to see in the RSS feed what other pages have posted webmentions to the page I'm reading.

What you're referring to @j2kun is named a *social reader*. See: https://indieweb.org/social_reader I'm sure there other examples of software/clients besides those portrayed on indieweb.org too.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#118

Post by cglong »

I've been trying to get back into RSS recently. The problem I keep having is the dramatic weight difference between a news site and a personal blog; I'm occasionally interested in what the news site posts, but its volume is so overbearing that it's all I see in my feed. I just walk away with FOMO every time.

I'm currently thinking about trying Feedly AI as an algorithm that could surface good content for me.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#119

Post by artisanspam »

I love RSS. I use RSS daily. I use link-aggregation websites like HN to find interesting authors and subscribe to any RSS feeds that they have. Highlights from my reader sync automatically into my Obsidian vault. It's great.

But I know I, and everyone else posting in this thread, are in the minority. It's clear that most people prefer algorithmic drip in a walled garden. There's a reason everyone flocks to those platforms when RSS superseded them. I don't think I need to re-hash why those platforms are bad for the health of the internet and society as a whole.

So what can be done at a structural level to fight this? What can be done to incentivize people to leave these algorithmic drip feeds to reverse this trend?

Post reply on HN