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Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

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Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#51

Post by quantadev »

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…

Good stuff getting "lost in the firehose" is a big concern. If there were a 'not easily game-able' way to have people upvote great content in a way that votes could be tallied that would help, but I'd much prefer, dare I say it...a "decentralized" protocol for that if possible. Maybe Nostr based where stuff is crypto signed with your key, and you choose who to trust maybe even. Not sure how much of this "follow.it" is doing, if any of it, because I haven't dug into it yet, but I'm optimistic we can revive RSS in a big way. It's too good of an idea to let BigTech and BigMedia kill it off simply by ignoring it. Big companies and AD agencies of course hate RSS because it puts users in charge if what they read rather than having to wade thru tons of AD views to get to content.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#52

Post by kgwxd »

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…

Fetching the feed less often can help but you still have to treat high volume feeds differently. With my best discipline, I was opening my reader just once a day and getting just whatever happens to be “front page” at the moment. The few YT channels I “follow” via RSS only post content a few times a month.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#53

Post by quantadev »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #13
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…

In my opinion the answer is curation. If you're getting so many magazines and newspapers in the post that you can't read them all, the answer isn't to hire someone to cut out random pages for you to read (oh, why are they all adverts?), the answer is to stop subscribing to so many publications. I never fail to read all of my social media feeds and email messages, because I actively cancel subscriptions to stuff that…

Hire someone? What about just using a system that crowd-sources it. That's what "Thumbs Up" icons can do, if you can get people to use them.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#54

Post by quantadev »

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…

You just need a reader that aggregates all your feeds into a single chronological list. Sure this means that you may never get thru the firehose, but it's easier to me than going to each subscription to read it individually. It's less work, and more fun as one big list.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#55

Post by vindex10 »

verisimi wrote: post #12
AstroBen wrote: post #8

I adore RSS. Some gems I've found: https://hnrss.org/ https://rsshub.app/twitter/user/{username} for twitter accounts Append .rss to any subreddit URL you want updates on YouTube also has an RSS feed for channels

Feeder https://github.com/spacecowboy/Feeder?tab=readme-ov-file Free, excellent

came here to mention Feeder :) it's very good.

it was a bit painful without search, but they finally merged the long-hanging merge request, and now the search across posts is available in the stable version!

totally recommend!

also, a bit aside, but for podcasts: antennapod seems to be doing a good job too!

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#56

Post by al_borland »

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…

One of the big issue I had (and have) with RSS is that is discouraged me from following multiple similar sources, as I’ll see similar stories in each feed and it becomes very noisy.

Some apps I saw in the past, like Fever that attempted to quell this issue, but I ended to taking the approach of just being ruthless about what I subscribe to.

The ultimate result of this was just a few feeds, but one of them is ars technica, which on its own can become too much if I don’t keep up on it daily, and if they miss covering something, I miss reading about it. It doesn’t leave room for special interest blogs in tech, without inevitably creating more duplication than I’d like.

I don’t think the modern algorithmic approach is much better, as things can just as easily fall through the cracks.

I need to seriously consider adopting your “read it now or read it never” approach. This is effectively how my read-it-later accounts work in practice, but with the good intentions of reading something later, comes the shame of never actually doing it. Compound that with the regret I feel when I occasionally open it up and find dead links. I don’t think any of this shame or regret actually makes my life better.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#57

Post by al_borland »

bitbasher wrote: post #46

A good RSS reader/feed is nice to curb over consumption. I use it for youtube channels and blogs. As long as I can consume the content via my reader, I don't need to visit youtube and fall down any rabbit holes.

I attempted this a while ago. I loaded all my YouTube subscriptions into an RSS reader, and then it quickly became too much for me to deal with. The big problem was that I do 99.5% of my YouTube viewing on a TV, while my RSS readers is on the phone and desktop. I learned that whatever solutions come up with needs to fit into my life. I’m not going to become a desk chair YouTube watcher.

YouTube effectively already has this built-in with their subscriptions. Not being able to turn off the recommended page, or default to loaded the subscriptions when opening the app on the TV are the real issues.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#58

Post by al_borland »

kgwxd wrote: post #47

One thing I highly miss from using RSS is never having to rescan over items I’ve already decided I’m not going to read. The occasional post about RSS usually gets me back on the wagon.

Why do you keep falling off the wagon? That is the real question to ask.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#59

Post by mbanerjeepalmer »

yapyap wrote: post #44
mbanerjeepalmer wrote: post #38

People here seem to fall into two camps: (A) Studiously prune your feeds like a bonsai. As the author suggest, follow the chain of trust to a small number of voices (for me, something like Stratechery, Simon Willison, Inner Ring). (B) Realise that RSS is another form of 'tyranny', this time at the hands of the publisher instead of the platform, where the composition of your feeds, and therefore what uses your attenti…

(I think) the thing is that you are not meant to get served content that is specifically for you. (insert this hole was made for me img) [1]) You get someone’s stream of content and you have to decide whether you are okay with the friction between what they are serving and yourself or if you are not and then unsubscribing. This is the same reason why AI generated music is soulless and isn’t liked. If music can be mad…

I don't disagree with you. I don't think that LLMs (or any other technology) filtering 'to meet my needs' ought to be my source of art, music or other worthy media. And part of the joy of picking up a printed newspaper or magazine is the sense it has been shaped for a wider audience, not just me, with a stronger shade of objective than subjective.

The point, though, is that if I'm following an ML arXiv feed and I'm interested in recommender systems, I really don't need to trawl through everything on interpretability, image generation etc. to get there, no matter how artful those papers are.

Re: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

#60

Post by casey2 »

s/the internet/youtube, facebook, instagram, twitter, reddit/ s/twitter/x/

Youtube subscriptions generally work fine, it isn't worth my time maintaining rss feeds for channels. Just make sure you click the button that says subscriptions. I don't use any of the other sites so I can't comment.

The real reason for frustration with personalization algorithms is that nobody is willing to go all the way because of the belief that the individual is evil and any creators that target individuals are promptly banned usually with no reason given at all, breaking some unspoken social rule.

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