Blogger discovers this cool thing called “RSS”.
I did this too recently. Highly recommend.
I’ve recently rediscovered RSS and I’m in love with it. I just wish Meta wasn’t a piece of fuck and let you add Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. there are some workarounds for the latter, but they’re really finicky.
Not an RSS solution, but in IG if you tap the “Instagram” logo at the top/right, a menu will pop up. You can select “following” to (mostly) see the accounts you’re following (and in reverse chronological order.)
that requires having an account.
With bibliogram you can follow instagram pages in rss: https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/
Facebook pages used to work with rss bridge: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge
With bibliogram you can follow instagram pages in rss
good luck finding an instance that works.
Facebook pages used to work with rss bridge
I’m well aware of the RSS Bridge and I use several of them hosted on the main instance, but how does “used to work” help? Facebook used to actually provide RSS feeds for their pages and they used to work, too.
You have to selfhost bibliogram, working for me, I usually get rate limited but get all updates once or twice a week.
There is a facebook bridge in rss bridge, for a long time it worked, I don’t follow its development nowadays, maybe someone with some php knowledge can resurrect it.
member when all the big cool web 2.0 companies had public facing APIs?
That was just for the growth and acquisition phase, using the network effect to capture consumers and businesses, get them addicted and dependent on the product, and then build a wall around them to lock them into your platform.
It’s a classic bait and switch, and if we didn’t live in corporate dictatorships masquerading as “democracy” it’d be illegal.
Yep, remember when XMPP was a thing so you could chat with anyone no matter the platform?
It is very much still a thing, and my preferred chat protocol - because it is easy to host and unlikely to enshittify.
Yeah, I meant in the sense that Facebook and Google had also implemented it so you could just talk to anyone with any client.
never stopped using rss/atom with ttrss 💪
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I was trying to find a solution to have all the news sources I care about in a single app. Then I remembered RSS and was able to do that very easily. I use self-hosted Miniflux and just use that as pwa when on my phone. Ridoculously lightweight and very awesome. I also setup Readeck (a Pocket alternative) where I push longer articles for when I’m up for reading more instead of just checking the latest news. I love it
Wait until I show them my PHP BB.
The problem I run into is most news sites optimize for 2 things
- Getting on google
- Getting linked on Twitter or Reddit
So most sites have a fuck ton of noise and carpet bomb ads.
I’d love to go back to the RSS model but it’s hard finding sites worth reading again.
Yeah, is there some sort of directory or something? That’d be cool.
On Firefox on Android there is a reader mode that gives you just the text and images. It’s the little icon next to the url. Sometimes you can bypass a paywall if you press it really quick before the page finishes loading.
Lemme clarify a bit. I love reader mode too and agree it cuts out a lot of cruft.
My point was that authors and articles spend less time trying to write an engaging article and more time trying to shove SEO keywords and questions into articles. It ruins the article and makes it something not worth reading.
Reader mode is great but if the substance isn’t there then it’s all for naught.
I use it quite often. Chills the eyes when reading. Standardized font(size) and design make this bearable.
I really agree - I’ve stepped away from reading so much of what’s online because it’s all clickbaity junk with no substance. I’m not sure where to look for actual content to put in my reader. But I’m making forays.
Find one or two sites you regularly like from your usual sources. Then when THOSE sources link to another source, FOLLOW that link. If that site has good content, add it to your list.
It doesn’t take long to build a solid RSS feed, just need to spend a little time curating it. The key is to pay attention to who is providing the info.
Don’t like the direction a site is going, remove it from your feed.
If you see that one source is commonly the original source for information, or reporting make sure you do what you can to support it. Do they have a patreon? Can you share it out to your other sources?
Also, make sure you’re not falling into a bubble, follow national and international news sources.
I’d love to take a look at what other people are following and what they like about it. My own followed are kind of random.
Maybe this is one of those Qs a simple web search can answer…
Really hoping I don’t dox myself with this…
I (tried to) remove all the local news sites, but this gives me a pretty decent overview of things I’m interested in, without being overwhelming. You should be able to find some local news sources, and add their LOCAL only feed, so you don’t get hammered with national and international news.
<outline text="ADHDinos" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/adhdinos/rss?title_no=820817" htmlUrl="https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/adhdinos/list?title_no=820817" description="A webcomic about ADHD and the difficulties I've encountered through it. *No permission required for reposts*"/> <outline text="Humon Comics" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Humon-Comics" htmlUrl="http://humoncomics.com" description="The latest issues."/> <outline text="Order of the Stick" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.rss" htmlUrl="http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html" description="Order of the Stick"/> <outline text="War and Peas" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://warandpeas.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://warandpeas.com/" description="Funny Comics"/> <outline text="Wondermark" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://wondermark.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://wondermark.com/" description="An Illustrated Jocularity."/> <outline text="XKCD" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://xkcd.com/atom.xml" htmlUrl="https://xkcd.com/"/> <outline text="AnandTech" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.anandtech.com/rss/" htmlUrl="https://www.anandtech.com" description="This channel features the latest computer hardware related articles."/> <outline text="Ars Technica - Logged In" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://arstechnica.com/feed/?t=d46cb9b3032ca6ca5789738f44a887d740740298" htmlUrl="https://arstechnica.com" description="Serving the Technologist since 1998. News, reviews, and analysis."/> <outline text="BleepingComputer" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/" description="BleepingComputer - All Stories"/> <outline text="Bloody Disgusting!" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/BloodyDisgusting" htmlUrl="https://bloody-disgusting.com/" description="Horror movie news, reviews, interviews, videos, podcasts and more"/> <outline text="Deeplinks" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" description="EFF's Deeplinks Blog: Noteworthy news from around the internet"/> <outline text="iFixit" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.ifixit.com/News/rss" htmlUrl="https://valkyrie.ifixit.com" description="Fixing the world, one gizmo at a time."/> <outline text="Krebs on Security" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://krebsonsecurity.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://krebsonsecurity.com" description="In-depth security news and investigation"/> <outline text="NPR Topics: News" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1001" description="NPR news, audio, and podcasts. Coverage of breaking stories, national and world news, politics, business, science, technology, and extended coverage of major national and world events."/> <outline text="Schneier on Security" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.schneier.com/feed/atom/" htmlUrl="https://www.schneier.com"/> <outline text="Science & Health – FiveThirtyEight" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://fivethirtyeight.com/science/feed/" htmlUrl="https://fivethirtyeight.com" description="FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis — hard numbers — to tell compelling stories about elections, politics and American society."/> <outline text="The 19th" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://19thnews.org/feed/" htmlUrl="https://19thnews.org/" description="The 19th is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy."/> <outline text="Universe Today" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.universetoday.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://www.universetoday.com/" description="Space and astronomy news"/>Omg thank you for sharing. I think you’re good re doxxing, the only one that looked iffy was that Ars Technica URL, and I did a thorough check and couldn’t find any PII or credentials leaking.
My own feed is pretty pathetic (had to reinstall OS and did back up the past 5 years):
<outline text="RSS" title="RSS" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://edunham.net/rss.html"/> <outline text="thefoolwithapen" title="thefoolwithapen" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://thefoolwithapen.com/index.xml" htmlUrl="https://thefoolwithapen.com/"/> <outline text="Wikipedia Atom feed" title="Wikipedia Atom feed" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentChanges&%3Bfeed=atom" htmlUrl="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges"/> <outline text="Tech News weekly bulletin feed" title="Tech News weekly bulletin feed" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&%3Bfeed=technews&%3Bfeedformat=rss" htmlUrl="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Main_Page"/> <outline text="PedalPC" title="PedalPC" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.pedalpc.com/rss.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.pedalpc.com/"/>I also don’ think I’m following Wikipedia correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to figure it out :/
Thanks, I updated the Ars one to a generic feed. Shoulda caught that.
This is why I legit built my own space news app , because my autistic brain can’t handle all the crap they’ve added to pages. I just need the text, and images. I don’t need links to other articles in the body of the article! I’m currently reading this article!! and stop citing your own articles as sources!
I use RSS but as far as I’m concerned, Lemmy is better, because it is categorized and ranked.
lemmy also supports rss! your inbox can generate a rss feed. Also communities have feeds that update whenever someone posts on them. For example for c/technology sorted after active: https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xml?sort=Active
I use RSS for sites where I want to read every update. That typically means serial comics; dev-blogs of indie games; other infrequent blogs; and some infrequent youTube channels (I don’t visit youTube other than via my RSS feeds);
Whereas I use Lemmy and other sites for skimming and browsing, and discovering new things.
I recently rediscovered RSS with Read You on F-Droid (I enjoy it’s UI and bionic reading). I also found something on Github called Follow that I use on my desktop running CachyOS.
People should be rediscovering RSS. It’s news that you tailor to yourself and doesn’t come bundled with the “social” part of social media.
I’ve been interested in trying out RSS again but I don’t want to self-host. Can anyone recommend a RSS client (hosted, local, or whatever) that they like?
On android i like ReadYou on fdroid
Thunderbird has RSS integrated, which could be quite neat once that synchronizes.
I prefer the Feedbro browser extension in Firefox. I think it is available for chrome/edge as well.
If you’re on iOS, feeeed is kinda slick :)
I needed this, thanks! For the lazy, it’s here.
I used Feedly since Google Reader was shut down. Then 1.5 years ago, as Feedly was getting more paywalls and AI-crap, I switched to Newsblur, and have been a happy user ever since. I love its Intelligence Trainer that lets me hide posts with certain tags/authors/keywords.
Unlimited hosted-by-them Newsblur costs 36 USD / year. It has a FLOSS version and a more limited free hosted-by-them version, but the 2.5 GBP / month was worth the QoL increase for me.
I’ve had some decent times with inoreader.
inoreader seems very ergonomic, thanks!
It can be as simple as just putting an app on your phone. I use feeder which is fine. Pretty bare bones, but in that way it’s easy to learn and use.
I’ve also been meaning to try out an app called Nunti, which I heard about a while ago from this Lemmy post. It claims to be an RSS reader with the added benefit of an (open source and fully local) algorithm to provide some light curation of your feed. It looks interesting, but I haven’t actually tried it out yet because I’m still deciding whether I want any algorithm curating my feed, even one as transparent as Nunti’s. It’s also only available through F-Droid right now, which is a bit of a barrier to entry.
If it’s open source, you could perhaps tinker with the algorithm. My main desires for rss feeds are:
- a way to filter out fluff affiliate link articles (e.g., 8 best gadgets on sale for prime day)
- a way to cluster articles on the same topic (i don’t really need to read 5 articles about the same news item)
Any clue if nunti could do that?
Man, I feel you on the affiliate link fluff. I actually ended up unsubscribing from the Popular Mechanics and Popular Science feeds because the signal to noise ratio was so bad.
The creator of Nunti provided a very good primer on the algorithm design here. Basically, you indicate to the app whether you like or dislike an article and then it does some keyword extraction in the background and tries to show you similar articles in the future. I suppose you might be able to dislike a bunch of the fluff and hope the filter picks up on it, but it isn’t really designed to support the kind of rules that would completely purge a certain type of content from your feed.
Oh wow, they really did a good job of explaining it. It’s not too complex. I think it probably would be able to filter out some of the fluff.
Newsblur can do the first kind of filtering. You select “best gadgets” in the title, and all posts on that feed with that phrase in the title will be hidden from then on.
The fact that it’s only available through fdroid is actually a good thing in my opinion.
there are some publically available FreshRSS instances that you can make an account with, I personally use hostux. you can access it with the browser and any apps that support FreshRSS (in my case, Read You or Capy Reader on Android, and sometimes RSS Guard on desktop).
Shot out to freshness, been using that for years! Self hosting it
FreshRSS for those playing along at home…
How do you all discover new RSS feeds to subscribe to?
My way is simple and stupid. I hit F12, then search for “rss” in the html and copy the link
Kagi Small Web, personally. Also a lot of people who blog on the Fediverse have RSS feeds, so discovery via Mastodon and such is good too.
I use an extension that searches the code on the page to find them. It puts a little number up, then when you click it you can copy the link.
I use Feedly for discovery, they have a crap load of websites you can subscribe to even if the websites don’t explicitly advertise RSS.
And then use the Feedly desktop website to get the actual RSS URL and put it in the client of your choice 🙃
You can set Google alerts for search terms. You’ll get articles when they pop up. Apparently I have the same name as a politician in Canada, so I get to keep up with what’s going on with that.
Wordpress sites publish an rss feed by default at site.com/rss or site.com/feed, so there’s a good chance a site you want an rss feed for has one even if they didn’t intend to.
After spending lots of time trying to find feeds, learning this was super helpful
I use an Browser Addon that searches for RSS feeds, still a bit finiky sometimes but still better than manually guessing URLs
That… seems like such an obvious solution lol, I just spend so much time on my phone I forget extensions are a thing unless I’m actively tinkering with my browser
Thank you so much for sharing! I’ll go take a look at firefox extensions when I next look for RSS feeds ☺️
Most of the feeds I subscribe to came to me in one of two ways:
- I enjoyed reading an article posted somewhere else (Lemmy, etc.) so I sought out the feed of that publisher.
- Sometimes news outlets enter into agreements to republish each others articles. When they do this, the re-publisher will usually include a little blurb at the end giving credit to the original publisher. If a feed I’m already subscribed to has an article re-published from elsewhere then I click through and check out the original source to see if I want to follow them as well.
- 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.
My local news sites block RSS because they paywall all their articles to force you to buy a newspaper or pay twice as much for online access.
I never stopped using it. It’s a shame some sites don’t have an rss feed anymore though…
Some RSS readers have the ability to generate an RSS feed from a site if they don’t support it. Some sites don’t show they have an RSS feed but they actually do.
Some smaller news sites share RSS feeds or newsletters if you support them on patreon.
Unfortunately a lot of sites have ditched support for RSS over the past 10 years requiring tedious work arounds if you can get it to work at all.
I hope it can make a comeback but I’m dubious.
I use it, as both a reader and a publisher, but rss (in particular) could do with an update.
