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I ditched the algorithm for RSS

joeyehand.com

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Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#271

Post by domysee »

bsnnkv wrote: post #269
domysee wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest cost of RSS feed items as a consumer is figuring out whether something is worth reading I'm working on an RSS feed reader, and it has a feature that solves that problem. For every subscribed feed, it shows the percentage of items that you actually bookmark and read. So if there are feeds that you subscribed to but don't read, you can easily find out which they are and unsubscribe from them. It's called…

The issue is that it's not possible to separate feeds from items. Even if some feeds are largely unread, I subscribed to them because I liked something they posted on a specific topic, and I still want to get updates whenever there is another feed item related to that specific topic. Ultimately the "feed" is the mechanism of delivery, but I don't think it should be the primary mode of categorizing item consumption. I…

If I understand you correctly you want to filter a feed on specific criteria (e.g. topic). Even if the feed publishes a lot of other content, you want to know the ratio of bookmarked content based of the filtered feed, ignoring the other content.

It's a great point, and helps me extend the feature and make Lighthouse better. So, thank you!

Lighthouse actually has that data. It supports rules, and tracks if a rule made an action (e.g. archive an article). So basically the ratio could ignore all articles that were automatically archived by rules.

I need to think more about how the UX of it should be, but it's a good next step for the feature.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#273

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

miah_ wrote: post #145
gleenn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be such a killer feature. And it could find other friends in the area and that are also free. Not like Meta doesn't have some kind of model for all that data already probably.

Yes. I'd love to find other nerds into retro computing, UNIX, and pottery in my area without wading into groups or joining a forum. They know everything about me, match me up with some people I'd most likely get along with!

Just put a chatbox at the end of the feed, that all the locals get dumped into when they also hit the end. Maybe based on IP or something. Grouped based on which articles you clicked on. "Hey, we think you guys will like eachother. Why don't you organize a meetup?"

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#274

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

Terr_ wrote: post #168
gleenn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be such a killer feature. And it could find other friends in the area and that are also free. Not like Meta doesn't have some kind of model for all that data already probably.

> That would be such a killer feature. "Alice, what if we made a button that improved overall human wellbeing, while somewhat reducing our ad-revenue and lowering the engagement-metrics we use to sell shares to investors?" "*sigh* We've been over this, Bob: We only build features for customers --not cattle."

If you want revenue, send them all to a nearby bar or other venue and work out a deal with that venue. "Hey, there's a bunch of Redditors and Joe's Bar right now! Take this coupon for 20% off and go meet them."

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#275

Post by kschaul »

I love RSS, but I often want to create a feed from websites that don’t offer RSS support (or the right features). So I built a little web service that, given a URL and a CSS selector, returns an RSS feed of those items. Figured it might be useful for others too.

Code -> https://github.com/kevinschaul/feedmaker Hosted version -> https://feedmaker.fly.dev/

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#276

Post by timbit42 »

quantadev wrote: post #210
timbit42 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon supports RSS.

Yeah, I've written an ActivityPub implementation of my own. Very familiar with Mastodon too of course. RSS is such low hanging fruit and so obvious a thing to use as the basis for social media posts.

I should have mentioned the entire Fediverse supports RSS.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#277

Post by [deleted] »

timbit42 wrote: post #276
quantadev wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've written an ActivityPub implementation of my own. Very familiar with Mastodon too of course. RSS is such low hanging fruit and so obvious a thing to use as the basis for social media posts.

I should have mentioned the entire Fediverse supports RSS.

[deleted]

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#278

Post by quantadev »

timbit42 wrote: post #276
quantadev wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've written an ActivityPub implementation of my own. Very familiar with Mastodon too of course. RSS is such low hanging fruit and so obvious a thing to use as the basis for social media posts.

I should have mentioned the entire Fediverse supports RSS.

Yeah, implementing an RSS feed is so trivial, I'm not surprised if many of the fedi apps have added it.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#279

Post by WhyNotHugo »

bluGill wrote: post #100

A good algorithm is a good thing. However what a good algorithm is for me is often different from what it is for those who maintain them. Outrage gets attention and sometimes it is needed, but there is a level of too much, and also a lot of outrage unfairly represents the issues and so it makes me mad even though if I understood the details I wouldn't be mad just concerned. I want an algorithm that surfaces things of…

Such an algorithm would require plenty of data to be well trained, and I fear that the same crowd that would value such an algorithm, prioritises privacy too much.

Perhaps malicious algorithms and tracking have driven us too paranoid to even collaborate on an algorithm that actually serves us.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#280

Post by jldugger »

bluGill wrote: post #100

A good algorithm is a good thing. However what a good algorithm is for me is often different from what it is for those who maintain them. Outrage gets attention and sometimes it is needed, but there is a level of too much, and also a lot of outrage unfairly represents the issues and so it makes me mad even though if I understood the details I wouldn't be mad just concerned. I want an algorithm that surfaces things of…

Here's what I do: - six 'links to top posts from the past week' links for subreddits/HN, in rotation. - a collection of RSS feeds from bloggers I've seen enough writing to recognize (and academic journals), which I check weekly

Every day is a focused collection of the most upvoted posts from one of those seven. It's hardly a perfect algorithm, but it at least disengages the worst instincts of FOMO. And the RSS feed can be seen as an escape hatch of sorts. If you really wanted to, you could try browsing /new once in a while as some kind of public penance or panning for gold.

edit: turns out the actual post is pretty close to this, with more RSS as a middleman. I just use Trello cards as rotating bookmarks, having given up on RSS being viable for anything other than the profitability of the RSS publisher.

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