I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too - Joey's Hoard of Stuff

I started using FreshRSS around the same time Reddit killed their API, it has rapidly become one of my favorite self-hosted apps.

Also,

open source software releases I follow

You have just taught me that I can add github release pages to my feed, I love FreshRSS even more now.

I use Feeder on android, which just lives on my phone instead of on my server.

Would you say there are distinct advantages to self hosting an RSS reader? Most of the time when im browsing sites and reading it's on my phone, not my desktop.

The content creators should be shouting about RSS from the rooftops. The only people that lose out are social networks, and startups. It would be more difficult for a new person to get a foothold, but at least we decide what we want to read on our own.

You start with vlogs you like.

Then see who they have in their blog roll.

More seriousl, I have literally used RSS regular since like 2006 or so. And I will NEVER forgive Google for killing Reader.

Anyway, what I mean to say is, its just a growing process. Someone links an article and you say, "Well, this sote seems interesting" and you stick it in your RSS reader.

Next thing you know you are pulling 1000-2000 articles a day, even with limiting filters.

One last bit of advice. Most systems let you export your subs.

DO THIS FROM TIME TO TIME BECAUSE YOU WILL HATE YOUR PAST SELF WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG AND YOU LOSE ALL YOUR SUBS.

You can try mine as a starting point if you like. It covers most subject areas, has categories so that you can easily delete the categories you don't care about. Just import the OPML file to any client you like. I like feedly personally.

Feedly does a great job of that.

This is where I've struggled. I've gone and tried once or twice and just kinda got confused and lost and came back to reddit, at that time.

• Look around in your online communities and see what publications get shared.
• Once you find some sites you like, search the web/communities for alternatives with the same topic/vibe.
• If you find journalists you like, see where else they publish their works, or what publications they used to work at. For bloggers / content creators, see who they collaborate with.

The companies deploying the algorithms aren't taking any of what you said into consideration though. They only want to feed you what has the most interaction as that can garner the most money from ad revenue.

The problem isn’t the algorithm just because it’s an algorithm, even chronological sort is technically an algoritim.

The problem is closed source algorithms with no user choice that implement dark patterns and other addictive and psychologically abusive tactics to make users engage with their app as much as possible

I don’t personally have any issue with algorithms - they work quite well for me, though it does require some active management. For example, if I watch one or two 30-second videos on YouTube, it quickly starts recommending more, which quickly floods my feed. However, when I start ignoring those recommendations, despite the temptation to click, the algorithm eventually stops pushing them and shifts back to suggesting accurately tailored, long-form content that genuinely interests me. The same goes for using the “not interested” button. This aligns with my experience on platforms like Twitter and Instagram as well, though the latter I no longer use.

Algorithms obviously don’t care whether the content they show you makes you glad that you saw it. They simply serve what captures your attention. If it's outrage, then that’s exactly what you’ll get. The algorithm knows plenty of other users engage with that kind of content, so it rationally assumes the same will apply to you.

The only problem with RSS is that it doesn't work for many many news sources as well as niche interests.

The RSS feeds on most of my country's news sources are literally a headline with a link to their website. Plus the ones that it does work for break multiple times per year (at least on feeder) so being able to actually fetch the article is a toss up. Right now even with freshly added feeds, 9 out of 10 are "cannot fetch full article".

I find most people's blogs rather boring and uninspired or extremely longwinded. I much prefer the kind of organic conversations from forums. Algorithms point me to the 4-5 pieces of content from people that I find interesting. I don't often subscribe to them because their other content is not as interesting.

With RSS feeds I would have to manually search through hundreds of articles and blog posts just to find 3 that I might actually be interested in. For example the less niche Phoronix has like 20 articles per day that are essentially fluff article padding updates like "video acceleration improvements merged for Mesa 25". Like I don't care at all. But the LACT Intel support addition I would be interested in 10 articles down.

"there is plenty more but you have seen all the important stuff - go outside and do something "

That is lemmy for me. I have removed communities I don't want to see, and subscribed to a lot of them and sort by hot.

Once the posts start losing quality (up votes) I move on.

I think it would be hard to re-invent RSS for money, it's part of why it's so simple.

RSS as a service makes sense for backend, not front end where most of the money would be made.

And killing RSS is... Kinda here? It's difficult to get a RSS feed on most websites, unless you can scrape it or find someone who's done it for you.

Man I should use RSS more...

ArsTechnica kinda does this too, but in a nice way. You can pay to subscribe to a better set of curated feeds, as a part of your subscription.

Thanks because I have no idea how to even start but this is something I would like to try and see if it's a good fit for me.

I'm using feeder on android and it's working well for me. On desktop I use Firefox extension but can't remember the name

https://search.f-droid.org/?q=rss&lang=en

Personally, Feeder.

I’ve been using Feedly on iOS for a few years since google dropped their rss client.

Android: Read You

Is it available from an app store? I only found the apk on GitHub but I'd rather not update manually.

Newsblur in desktop web browser, 36 USD / year

It has a FLOSS version and a more limited free version hosted by them, but the 2.5 GBP / month was worth the QoL increase for me.

Inoreader does this web and Android/Apple clean controls and responsive UI.

Paid version has a ton of enhancements including trending things among other users.

I use https://miniflux.app/. It's pretty small, costs $15/year. I do this because I want to keep my feed status across different devices.

I'm not perfectly happy with it. Perhaps it's a bit too minimal. When I subscribe to an aggregate like Hacker News, it pretty much floods my feed and I get swamped.

If anyone has a slightly better alternative in mind, I'd be happy to hear.

I use Newsblur, it’s a web site and will fetch feeds even if my computer is offline.

I have been pretty happy with Read You

I used feeder before that. Feeder is fine and may even have more options, but Read You has that perfect layout and text formatting...

I use quiterss on my linux desktop. Its already in the repos on debian and works great for me. I have extremely minimalistic requirements tho, so might not be for you if you want a shiny UI. It has tagging, custom keyword filtering, folders, notifications. All i need.

I use NewsBoat on Linux, but it's a terminal app and not for everybody. On Android I use CapyReader, and IMHO it's quite nice.

I use Thunderbird and Read You

Newsblur is the one I migrated to and haven’t looked back.

There are good RSS reader web browser extensions. Firefox has a few. Check out Feedbro.

https://theoldreader.com/

No. They're two different tools. the article misses the point

I mean you have to subscribe to a feed to be able to see it and I don’t see how RSS could sync a feed you don’t even know about. I suppose if someone started a platform that everyone used to sync their feeds then people could uncover content from the RSS feeds of other users but that seems to take the really simple out of really simple sync (RSS)

Thanks! I like it a lot.

Very cool! Thanks for making this and sharing.

Looks sick, bookmarked!