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Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

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Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#21

Post by mnls »

There is a misunderstanding about RSS and escaping algorithms. Sure, you are not under the social media control but you certainly are under the publisher control. Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news. It becomes overwhelming and if you want inbox zero it’s another digital burden. The result is that I pretty much lost interest on following some websites through RSS because even though I do like some of the articles, it’s another way of doomscrolling when searching for the one thing that will give you the dopamine hit.

So after excluding the vast majority of websites, I was left with 10-20 websites that I did enjoy ~60% of the content they put out and I've subscribed to their newsletter. Which in most cases is full of tracking links but that’s a case for another topic.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#22

Post by rambambram »

It takes effort indeed. Just as putting up a little homepage, writing articles, essays or short tidbits, and publishing an RSS feed for that.

What I do with my self-built reader (link in bio) to have it not function as a newsfeed from regular social media, is to only get the latest posts from randomly selected feeds. I don't need all of the unread posts from all of the sources (there are 1415 now in my list) every time. This is also nicer for the publishers (that may be you, fellow HNer!), since every request to your feed is actually read.

In the beginning of using my own reader I was really craving the dopamine shot from regular social media, it literally took me two years to get used to my self-inflicted info diet. Now it's really a calm blessing, especially because I read stuff posted by yet another internet fellow who has a blog. Way more human.

Using RSS is different and should be different. Wanting RSS and the social open web, and then transforming it to regular social media with notifications and a firehose of news is the same as building a new barebones electric pickup truck and then wanting it to connect to an app.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#23

Post by zufallsheld »

mnls wrote: post #21

There is a misunderstanding about RSS and escaping algorithms. Sure, you are not under the social media control but you certainly are under the publisher control. Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news. It becomes overwhelming and if you want inbox zero it’s another digital burden. The result is that I pretty much lost interest on following some websi…

I can and do filter on certain feeds. My reader (tiny tiny rss) supports filtering based on the contents of the articles.

I filter sponsored articles or ones that need a subscription, articles that are a series, links to podcasts, recurring series..

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#24

Post by rambambram »

mnls wrote: post #21

There is a misunderstanding about RSS and escaping algorithms. Sure, you are not under the social media control but you certainly are under the publisher control. Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news. It becomes overwhelming and if you want inbox zero it’s another digital burden. The result is that I pretty much lost interest on following some websi…

> Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news.

I agree on the second part, but the first part is not necessary. RSS is technically not hard, one can write one's own reader very quickly. You don't have to consume everything a publishers publishes, I don't even see everything a publisher publishes because I don't even request everything a publisher publishes.

I think the (your? my?) curation should focus on selecting some good sources (like the article says), but this means in no way that you should see everything all the time. Only when you want, in a quantity that's doable for you.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#25

Post by tducasse »

My problem with RSS is that I tend to subscribe to too many things and then it's too much. Also I wanted a solution that was free or self hosted, but I realized it's much better if someone manages the complexity for me, so I just ended up going with the paid hosting for miniflux (https://miniflux.app/).

Now I've just subscribed to a few things I care about, I open the website from time to time, quickly mark as "read" stuff I'm not interested in, and when I have more time I just go through everything that is still unread, because it's been "filtered in". Seems to work!

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#26

Post by safety1st »

vaylian wrote: post #15
safety1st wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS came of age in a very different time, when the world of computing was more, for lack of a better term, workstation-centric. People wanted RSS clients that were similar to email clients, or maybe even integrated directly into the email client, and they had this idea that they should 'catch up' on everything that was published since their last session, almost like it was a job. Nowadays people have an implicit unde…

> firehose This is what the modern information space feels like in one word. It's impossible to read everything. But at the same time, it's not necessary to read everything. > What we lack is a presentation that is actually good! I don't have the answer. One thing I want to experiment with, though, is digests. Do you have a RSS feed that I can subscribe to so that I get notified when you publish your experiment?

I've never actually published any of the code I use to view my RSS feeds. This question comes up from time to time when I discuss the subject though! Maybe I will one of these days.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#27

Post by rambambram »

safety1st wrote: post #10
bsnnkv wrote: post #6

> And that's also where the magic lies because it's that very process of engaging with content and deciding whether or not it has value to you that makes using an RSS reader a better experience and one where you own your attention. Back when RSS was more popular, the tyranny of never-ending backlogs was a topic that was discussed somewhat regularly, but it gets glossed over a little these days since RSS talk is natur…

RSS came of age in a very different time, when the world of computing was more, for lack of a better term, workstation-centric. People wanted RSS clients that were similar to email clients, or maybe even integrated directly into the email client, and they had this idea that they should 'catch up' on everything that was published since their last session, almost like it was a job. Nowadays people have an implicit unde…

I did something like this with my reader:

- Only subscribed to lots of niche news and small websites (most of my list has the category 'dev blog' attached to it, so that's all of you guys/girls with a blog).

- Only get posts when I click, basically no automatic hoarding in the background (except for my Newspaper functionality, which does a little bit of background request for important feeds that I manually selected).

- Just pick the last post from a randomly selected feed. This really gets me going from reading about Linux, to reading about the best way to bake a cake, to reading about interior design, to reading about bikepacking... all in one sit.

- Or only pick from randomly selected feeds with a certain category, when I'm in the mood for a specific kind of news. For example, I want to know new videos on selected Youtube channels, or i only want to see posts with a picture attached (I call it 'photo feeds').

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#28

Post by ezekiel68 »

> We start by finding someone whose judgement we trust and subscribing to their feed...

...and in no time at all, these "someones" will be made offers not all of them will refuse to parlay their trusted judgements into income by marketing agencies. It seems trust will not only need to be gained but also somehow maintained.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#29

Post by nexo-v1 »

I keep coming back to the idea of curating my own reading through RSS.

I missed the first wave: mostly stuck to aggregators and blogs, but eventually set up a Feedly account. Like others here, I found maintaining a meaningful list takes real energy. It's easy to over-subscribe and end up with a second inbox.

Still, I think the effort is worth it. The best systems I've worked on always rewarded small, regular maintenance over trying to automate everything away. Feels like curating information works the same way.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#30

Post by rambambram »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #9
karpathy wrote: post #7

I also find myself wanting to go back to RSS for the exact same reasons of 1st paragraph. You own your content and host it. Unfortunately all the RSS readers are too raw and I think one of them has to port over Twitter features, things like: more ephemeral feed instead of an inbox, reply, quote tweet, retweet, like, follow, and new: LLM-driven customizable algorithmic feed.

> more ephemeral feed instead of an inbox How would that work?

Let your reader only show randomly selected posts from all your feeds, for instance.
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