Here’s something that appears slightly unsettling to me these days.
Recently I unsubscribed from a bunch of email-newsletters from Tech sites (which used to end up in my inbox at a regular interval) - and instead switched over to an RSS reader (Feeder from F-Droid), and added the feeds from as many of those Tech sites in my reader as I could.
My whole point for doing this was to ensure that I follow stuff on my own terms - and also I get all the feed in one place (one app) instead of those newsletter emails taking me to their individual Tech Sites.
And in spite of being old school, I always thought RSS to be cool tech, just like Radio!
Some of the tech sites I subscribed for newsletter are Android Authority, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Engadget, TechCrunch, TechRadar, PC World, Mashable,… You get the idea.
What I am noticing is that most of the feeds from these sites are blatantly “Promotional” in nature - e.g.
“The best robot vacuums for hardwood will keep those floors looking spiffy”
“The best home security camera ahead of Prime Day”
“Get a Microsoft Office lifetime license for/an all time low price”
“The best T-Mobile deals of October 2023”
“Best early October Prime day tech deals”
…and don’t get me started about ExpressVPN sponsored posts…
Unsurprisingly, I do see that almost all of them carry sponsored/affiliated links.
Seriously ?? I can’t focus on just the tech news, and avoid these promotional BS ?
Would love to hear if anyone else experienced this, and any workaround there might be.
Users be like “I’m encountering mostly promotional articles in my RSS feed”
My brother in christ, you curated the feed
Lemmy has RSS feeds. Follow catalogues you like, subscribe to blogs when you like articles and the feed seems to have high signal to noise. I started with 6 feeds 2 months ago, now I subscribe to just under 90 different feeds of personal blogs, substacks, and media organizations.
Muting also works for RSS (depending on client). If a feed is generally good but posts a sponsored “deal of the day” in a way that can be filtered, you can add that to your filter.
Also, your local independent newspaper may have an RSS feed. Follow what’s going on in your neighborhood, not just online.
I agree. Tech news, in general, is basically ads, some more thinly veiled than others – it’s a lot of “look at this new cool thing.” And the tech critics, with the exception of Cory Doctorow, generally know surprisingly little about tech itself, focusing instead on the companies, their owners, their users, their financing, and so on. That can be very valuable, but I do think that it’s missing a piece.
This is why I founded theluddite.org. It’s an independent site written by leftists working in tech and academia, mostly aimed at other people in tech and academia, but also for tech enthusiasts. We are not professional opinion-havers, which means we don’t need to stay friendly with say Apple to get invited to their product launch or get early access to their new service or whatever, and that’s good, because I hate apple. I myself am the main writer for the luddite, and I write code for a living every day, and have been for going on 13 years. It’s something that surprisingly few tech commentators have ever done. Because of our jobs, we know how technology and the industry actually work. That’s why, while other people can write about Google’s court case, we can just straight up show you how google is breaking the internet.
We’re mostly interested in how that intersects with human agency and society. It’s also explicitly anti-capitalist. That may or may not be your jam, but given the nature of this post, I assume you’re at least a little skeptical of a system which fills everything with ads and pretends it’s news :).
I should have mentioned that I already have theluddite.org RSS in my reader, and I do enjoy your articles. Thanks !
omg haha. Glad to have you! I guess the lemmy tech communities are pretty small ;)
It’s called “contextual commerce.” Article about a product has a link to said product; if you click and make a purchase, the news site makes a little money. Thus, incentivizing the new site to publish more and more articles about products.
I’ve very much experienced it, I just don’t follow them anymore and rely on Lemmy for that. It’s not great, though, definitely not my preferred solution.
Wish I had a better one.
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