Although RSS feeds are alive and still heavily used today, their level of adoption has suffered because of how difficult a handful of popular technology companies have made it to use them. Google, especially, has relied on the open web RSS protocol to gain so much market share and influence, but continues to engage in behavior that exploits the open web at the expense of its users. As a result, Google has single-handedly contributed to the reason many users who once relied on RSS feeds have stopped using them.
They did the same thing with XMPP/Jabber (this is why Fediverse should be really careful with threads) and Usenet
This makes me want to investigate / get involved in using more RSS feeds. Never used them before… Idk why
RSS feeds are incredible and I absolutely hate how many websites stopped using them or providing them. I’ve built so many web scrapers that probably uses more of their server resources because a site refuses to provide a way for me to know when they have new content.
You can get an RSS feed of any Lemmy community to be notified evey time there’s a post there
RIP Google Reader
I still use Gmail, Gcal, and Google Drive, but when they killed GReader is the closest I’ve ever come to dumping all things Google. In the end it was just too much hassle to move everything, let everyone know my new email, etc., but I’m still not over it.
That said, it’s not free, but I’ve been on NewsBlur since the GReader shutdown, and that’s been 10 years now I think. It’s very similar in use to GReader, and has got a lot of great features and customization options. It’s also run by one very active dev who keeps it updated, fixes anything that breaks, and answers questions on the forums. So I’m supporting an independent developer and not a company. It’s well worth the cost to me, and I use it multiple times a day every day.
I’ve been considering trying RSS based on the feedback I’ve read about it over the years. Never got around to it though… Any suggestions where to start? Is there a particular reader anyone can recommend?
Edit: wow–thanks for all the responses!!
I’ve been using Feeder, it’s nothing amazing, but it’s FOSS and the notifications work!
Come to think of it, i heard of this one recently… Never got around to trying it though. Thanks for the suggestion!
Fluent Reader is my client of choice.
Tiny Tiny RSS is a great web based self-hosted option.You can also integrate Tiny Tiny RSS feed (via Fever API) into Fluent Reader.
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll check em out this weekend.
NetNewsWire
Thanks!
Its paid (or self hosted), but I love feedbin. It has completely replaced my YouTube Feed.
Interesting! I’ll def check this out, i really could use an alternative to my YouTube feed…
I was using theoldreader.com before I started hosting my own freshrss instance.
I mean… Even if Google didn’t do nothing most would be shit anyway or not exists because they usually either don’t have ads or there isn’t a nice way to have ads and much less tracking, most webs would have either removed them or it would be super basic where you have to enter the page to read anything.
