I used to love RSS. I love it now as well, but I used to, too.

Back in the middle 00’s, almost everything I would read would be through an RSS reader. I don’t quite remember which reader I used. Probably Google Reader. Anyway. I thought it was awesome. Having all your favorite content source all conveniently in one place with the ability to track what you read to what you didn’t read yet was awesome. Before that it was mailing lists. Social network were at their beginnings.

Then Facebook came.

Suddenly there was this new platform that was becoming the epicenter of the internet. Facebook would allow you to catch up with all your friends and family plus all of your favorite news/content sources in one convenient timeline that you could scroll forever and always find something interesting.

That was pretty cool. I’d still use RSS then as I didn’t want to miss anything. But it’d be less and less important in my reading habits because Facebook, or any current social media for that matter, is a much more attractive way to browse through content.

Then online advertising became the driving force behind everything on the internet.

Which in turn rendered RSS more and more obsolete. Not in the eyes of the users necessarily, but in those of publishers. They could serve more ads, and more relevant ones, and collect more data on their visitors if they visited their actual site rather than fetching text from a feed. And like I said before, social medias are way more engaging than a simple article list. And novelty is also seducing. No wonder Facebook grew exponentially in popularity.

Then RSS became a mere tease.

Once publishers figured that out, they stopped putting their whole article in the RSS feeds. Only a few lines as a preview or the first paragraph followed with a “Read More” link. Then they started removing RSS icons and links from their websites. Even now they are hidden, they can usually be found at http://website.com/feed

That, plus my rising Facebook, and later reddit usage, and then Google pulling the plug on its reader killed RSS for me.

Why would I keep using RSS? It’s just an aggregate of links. That’s what Facebook and reddit are doing but with reactions and comments built-in. And you can let your friends see what you did or didn’t like. Share it with them. Just more engaging really. Certainly more than just a mere list of articles. Why bother at this point?

RSS is dead.

So be it then. No more RSS. But after a while it becomes clear Facebook is evil so I ditch it. Reddit is now my front page to the internet :wink:

Or is it dead?

Reddit is great. I still use it and love it. But let’s be real. All of internet is evil. Reddit tracks you just the same. Tries to push it’s own agenda just the same. Provides an echo chamber just the same.

Fast forward to 2022 and I see people discussing their self-hosted RSS aggregator on r/selfhosted. Wait a minute. Self-hosting is relatively recently becoming cool and people start hosting dead tech? What gives?

Turns out people haven’t forgot or gave up about RSS. It’s not dead tech. It’s very much alive in the blogosphere. It’s like it didn’t really left actually. People use it to keep track of little blogs like this one because that’s better than mailing lists and better than bookmarks. And personal blogs aren’t exactly what pops up in Google searches. Plus, people writing does might not care at all about visibility. You just kind of “stumble upon them”, like in the early internet.

More small, personal and stories-centric blogs, less dreadful world news.

I now use RSS again because I don’t want to forget about those blogs that give such a personal touch to things I’m interested in. Self-hosting brought me there actually. I enjoy reading not just guides and how-to’s but stories of how people came to host what they host and why they do it. Re-connecting with this kind of content makes me search for other blogs in my other fields of interest and I’m better for it.

RSS is taking back what was taken away. And more!

Another big factor for me to use RSS again is the amazing work people have done to make RSS worth using again. People developed powerful text parsers that can fetch the full content of an article and display it in the RSS reader itself. Just like back in the good old days. This makes it possible to also get content back from bigger news sources that previously turned their backs on RSS feeds. Given they still maintain an RSS feed that is. Most still do though. Just hidden, as I mentioned earlier.

Besides, don’t go around saying this too loudly but some text parsers are even able to bypass paywalls :smirk:

So now I use RSS daily.

All of that makes me use RSS every day again. Still no Facebook. Less reddit. Less content shoved in my face and more self-curated content. With a side benefit of less tracking. Plus I can self-host an RSS aggregator so I don’t need to share my feed list with a company that will try to monetize my interests.

But I want to keep reddit more as a way to engage with different communities and less as a source of information and mindless scrolling.

Miniflux is delightfull.

After trying Tiny Tiny RSS, FreshRSS and Miniflux, the choice was easy. I settled with Miniflux for its efficient minimalism. It blazing fast and minimal in every way. It has Vim-like shortcuts and includes Readability as text parser. Offers many read-it-later type integration like Pocket, Wallabag, Linkding.

I don’t need more.