1y ago

Do you use RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it is a simple, standardized content distribution method that can help you stay up-to-date with your favorite newscasts, blogs, websites, and social media channels. Instead of visiting sites to find new posts or subscribing to sites to receive notification of new posts, find the RSS feed on a website and read new posts in an RSS reader.

Do you use RSS to curate your own information feed? Looking to expand my sources to include different perspectives and new interesting topics and would love any suggestions.

61 comments

Yeah. I run my own FreshRSS server and use FeedMe to access it. It's mostly just a bunch of UK newspapers and tech news sites because I realised I was getting all my news from Twitter and I wanted to cut back my use of Twitter. It's fine. The great thing about getting my news from social media was that I'd follow a load of people with similar interests to me so I'd mostly just see articles that interested me regardless of the source. Now it takes more scrolling to get past the articles I don't care about to find the ones I want to read. It means I get a broader overview of news that isn't effectively curated for me, either by other people or by algorithm, but it's not as engaging. It is the right choice though if you're looking to see more outside of what you're usually shown, as you say.
- I've been running tiny tiny tss (ttrs) server since google reader died. It's been great & there's an android app.
  
  There is also an iOS app. It is quite simple but it works well.

I have been an RSS user for the past 20 years. I use it for all sorts of stuff including current news, keeping up with technology, health, classified listings (craigslist), site updates, forums, etc.
I used GoogleReader for a long time (RIP), now I use Feedly which is amazing. I hit the ALL button so I get a firehose of news feeds which are sorted by timestamp, NOT some dumb algorithm choosing when and what I see.
As I tell everyone, whenever a current event happens in the world, I see 20+ different headlines from different sites spinning the same story. This lets me cut through the BS and see the real story about what's happening.
I subscribe to a few hundred RSS feeds including a bunch of random useless ones. But here's a few I picked that might be beneficial - note that some of these sites have multiple rss feeds depending on specific topics - be sure not to subscribe just to the main "top stories" feeds.
ABCNews , InvestorPlace, Associated Press, Ars Technica, The Nation, BBC News, CNN, Fox News, The Hill, LA Times, New York Times, MSNBC, Mother Jones, NBC News, NPR, Newsweek, Politico, Time, Scientific America, Slashdot, Techcrunch, TechRadar, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, The Independant, Motley Fool, Google News Top Stories, USA Today, Vox, Wired, Yahoo News, Cnet, Men's Health, TechRepublic, WallStreetJournal, TheStreet
I'd also love to hear some other news sources I can add to my subscriptions, because I know I'm missing a bunch of good ones
- Yes indeed. Feedly is great and available everywhere. Zero dollars paid ever.

About 50% of what I read ~~online~~ is just RSS. For cli fans, newsboat lets you extend the RSS feeds really easily. So far, I have:
gemini translation, to get gemini feeds, and a hotkey to open them.
a hotkey to open things in w3m (most articles work fine in the terminal, many are easier to read)
a hotkey to open youtube videos
another to download them and watch later

I use fluent reader with the following rss feeds (though I really need to expand

Blog Title	URL
ACSC - Recent Alerts	https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/alerts/rss
Check out Linux Foundation's Blog	https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/rss.xml
Microsoft Azure Blog	https://azurecomcdn.azureedge.net/en-au/blog/feed/
Cloud & Enterprise Technology	https://build5nines.com/feed/
The latest articles from GamingOnLinux	https://www.gamingonlinux.com/article_rss.php
Tecmint - Linux Howtos, Tutorials, Guides, News, Tips and Tricks.	https://www.tecmint.com/feed/
A Linux and Open Source Web Portal	https://itsfoss.com/feed/
Announcements, Updates, and Launches	https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/feed/
Just another Amazon Web Services site	https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/feed/
News from the Mint Team	https://blog.linuxmint.com/?feed=rss2
How-tos and tutorials for sys admins	https://linuxways.net/feed/
We keep an eye on digital trends, technology, focusing on tech business and software companies. We also provide how-to tutorials for Linux.	http://feeds.feedburner.com/noobslab
The latest and greatest news from the Arch Linux distribution.	https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
Just another GNOME Blogs site	https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/feed/
An independent, reader-supported publication focusing on Linux Command Line, Server, Self-hosting, DevOps and Cloud Learning	https://linuxhandbook.com/rss/
Tutorials for Linux	https://linuxbuz.com/feed
nixCraft: Linux Tips, Hacks, Tutorials, And Ideas In Blog Format (RSS/FEED)	https://www.cyberciti.com/atom/atom.xml
Discord Blog	https://discord.com/blog/rss.xml
The Mozilla Blog	https://blog.mozilla.org/feed/
main	https://500mile.email/feed.xml

Yeah. It's the easiest way to stay up to date on news without getting blasted with ads. Almost all news apps are bloated with bullshit features.

I've tried so many RSS platforms but it doesn't work for me (I blame my ADHD). As sad as it is, I always got my country & world news from Reddit in the past.
- Great thing about rss is that you can rss reddit subs too, and even use reddit front ends to set up the rss.

I use Inoreader, it provides a great way to quickly get up to speed on the news, without relying on 'human curators' on reddit or twitter. I've been able to add lemmy and kbin community feeds no problem, and it currently serves as my 'front page', until lemmy itself becomes more stable.
Auto-de-duplication and word filters help me keep my sanity and avoid the constant musk-worship on tech sites.

Yeah, of course. How else will I know when my various serialized content updates? Like, are people out there just checking a list of blogs and comics by hand every few days? I used to do that before RSS, and it suuuuuucked.

RSS is great! I use it for Slashdot, Youtube, some webcomics.

Yeah, I've been an RSS user for 20ish years now. I've used feedly since GReader, but I'm considering going with a local docker solution soon.

Yes I do. Just briefly described them today @ https://sh.itjust.works/comment/626296

Before hosting my own FreshRSS instance I used TheOldReader (and Google Reader before that). It's a great way of focusing you're attention and keep track of sites. It does hurt them though, since it won't load their ads.
- On the other hand, if you also use adblocker, RSS hurts them less by being more efficient on their servers.

I follow a couple of blogs via RSS, I use https://www.newsblur.com
- I'm using Fluent Reader as my client.
- +1

Yes, I use feedly. Newsblur is restricting a lot of things in their free version, but I find Feedly more open.

Absolutely. Using feedly for my RSS feeds.

Yeah, been selfhosting freshrss for years. I use it as much as possible. Even for GitHub releases and subreddits. I see that lemmy has an RSS link too.

Yes. Self-hosted FreshRSS, which can pull the full articles, reading either via FreshRSS or feedme on android. I basically never visit websites if I'm not searching something specific.
- Nice to see a FOSS alternative to TTRSS. I tried to contribute to the latter once, it was an.. interesting experience.
  
  I don't have first hand experience, but yeah, I've read about challenges with the maintainer of TTRSS and decided on FreshRSS. Been very happy with FreshRSS for years so never tried TTRSS.
- yup. I also use a self hosted FreshRSS server, and it's great. I can get all my content in one place without having to remember to go to websites.
- FreshRSS is great. It's easy to host and there are so many client apps that can interface with it. I had fallen out of using RSS after google reader died, getting back into it has really eliminated a lot of the wasted time browsing random websites.

I would but I can't think of anything to follow with it
- Anything really. Almost any website you use probably supports it from video platforms like YouTube to Lemmy you are posting from.
  
  Yeah I do know it's available. I just can't think of any source which would interest that much

Used it.
Just realized i've still had it in outlook for years and haven't checked it

Yup! I use Feeder as my RSS aggregator of choice
I subscribe to technology news sites and lgbtq+ news sites using it, since it's waaay better than going into each site and finding an article that interests me, opposed to opening feeder and finding my links categorized by site

Yep! There's a community here for recommendations related to RSS too! !rssfeeds@lemmy.world
I've recently realized that I may also want a different desktop app (so not necessarily involving a server) for reading RSS feeds than what I've been using. Was trying to use Thunderbird for this for the convenience of email/calendar/RSS, but I have this feeling that it may not be able to adequately handle some of the variations I've seen cropping up with some sites' RSS (which may be those sites mucking it up more than anything to do with Thunderbird tbh but not sure).

I have a hosted rss reader/aggregate set up. But I only occasionally check it and read or go through a few.

Yes, I use FeedBro in Firefox. Mainly for youtube and reddit.
- Can you get FeedBro to work on mobile? Does is sync between computer with a Firefox profile?
  
  I don't use it on mobile, but it should work on browsers that support extensions (Firefox, Kiwi).
  It does not sync, however there is an option to import/export feed.

I use NextCloud News, it's super convenient and also syncs between my phone and computer. I use it for reading the news (playing hide and seek with one news site after another when they inevitably disconnect their RSS/Atom support), for the webcomics I follow, and for keeping up with friends' blogs.

I stopped using RSS around when I started using Reddit, so around 2008-2009!
I'm surprised to see that it's still so popular, or has it gained traction again recently?
I didn't hear much about RSS in between 2010-2022 TBH.
- The whole podcast ecosystem is based on RSS. It's more popular than ever. People just don't realize that they're using RSS.
- It never really died, but it got a boost lately with people getting more critical about the sources they get the news from instead of relying on Google or Apple algorithms. Fediverse supporting RSS also didn't hurt.

Yep, I have set it up so that I have all my favorite blogposts redirected to one single Telegram channel

Yep, I use Read You on Android / LineageOS!
https://github.com/Ashinch/ReadYou

I started after I stopped using reddit, and became the replacement for me when it came to articles I used to rely on reddit for.

Every day,

I’ve spent years tailoring my feeds in Reeder and use it every day. Up until last month I split my attentions between RSS and Reddit but now it’s mostly RSS with ever-growing Lemmy time.

Reeder is great for this!

Yes. It's much more convenient and I like it better than optimized subscriptions.

Absolutely. I use Miniflux and clients on various devices to get the sync feature. I mostly have tech and game news there, though.

I am using Lire as client in iOS and Mac: http://lireapp.com

Yeah, just recently started self hosting FreshRSS instance. Before that i used Newsboat, first entry on its database is from 2020/09 so been a while in use. But basically i use it for my news reading, linux distro news and used to collect twitter feeds there but now...
Give it a go, easy way to gather all news feeds/blogs/basically anything you want to read in one place!

I do, mostly for just subreddits so I don't have to keep visiting reddit.

I used it in thr past with Google Reader, and I'm using it again now as a replacement for more niche gaming/tech news that I used to get from various smaller subreddits.