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RSS is nigh-unusable for many sites now because they only put the first few sentences of an article in the feed, then "continue reading on our site <link> [wher

RSS is nigh-unusable for many sites now because they only put the first few sentences of an article in the feed, then "continue reading on our site <link> [where we can show you our ads]". It makes sense from a business perspective, because RSS has no good way to embed ads. However, it greatly diminishes the value of RSS -- reading ALL of your content in one easily-organized place. The best alternative that I've found is Feedly, which can show ads inline.

ece 9y ago
It depends, you can embed ads and content in a feed, or some content and no ads. I think depending on what you're reading, academic, non-profit, ad-supported, etc.. the published RSS feeds add more value than take away for both parties.
trqx 9y ago
Of course there is this trend of not giving more than the title/first sentence but those feeds all belong to that weird, hostile, parallel universe where advertising / tracking / consumerism of closed tech is seen as an efficient way of sharing information to the reader. Lots of content is produced there but is it worth reading it? doubt it, unless you want to be sucked into their world. I'm pretty happy with what is outside and consider the "sane" part of the internet.
robgibbons 9y ago
I built my own reader, in which I have a Mercury API integration. This allows me to click a link and scrape the source article, so I can read the rest of it inline (and with no ads) https://mercury.postlight.com/web-parser/ https://mercury.postlight.com/web-parser/
hedora 9y ago
I'm a fan of this for sites that don't include the full-text of the article: http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ It sucks that the content producer doesn't get any ad revenue, but it also sucks that the only way they can get paid involves tracking me and building a profile despite my wishes. On the other hand, I've found that non-profits / independently-funded researchers produce most of the best RSS feeds, and I happily donate to the non-profits.
rhizome 9y ago
Moving to snippets was a bummer when many RSS sites stopped doing full feeds (I remember it being kind of a wave), but eh, ultimately it's been fine and it's still scads better than the alternative of having to visit each site individually, often dealing with autoplay this and popup that.
tedunangst 9y ago
As someone who hosted RSS, but not ads, the reason for doing that was primarily bandwidth related. Serving unchanging content to clients every five minutes is just wasteful. A lot of RSS clients are shit.
- baby 9y ago
  that's why we had feedburner. Is it still a thing?
baby 9y ago
> RSS is nigh-unusable for many sites now because they only put the first few sentences of an article in the feed It has always been like that for some websites, and I haven't seen an increase of these kind of RSS feeds.
fnl 9y ago
NewsBlur, the reader I mainly use, can fetch that linked web page for you with a single click.

ece 9y ago

It depends, you can embed ads and content in a feed, or some content and no ads. I think depending on what you're reading, academic, non-profit, ad-supported, etc.. the published RSS feeds add more value than take away for both parties.

trqx 9y ago

Of course there is this trend of not giving more than the title/first sentence but those feeds all belong to that weird, hostile, parallel universe where advertising / tracking / consumerism of closed tech is seen as an efficient way of sharing information to the reader. Lots of content is produced there but is it worth reading it? doubt it, unless you want to be sucked into their world. I'm pretty happy with what is outside and consider the "sane" part of the internet.

robgibbons 9y ago

I built my own reader, in which I have a Mercury API integration. This allows me to click a link and scrape the source article, so I can read the rest of it inline (and with no ads) https://mercury.postlight.com/web-parser/ https://mercury.postlight.com/web-parser/

hedora 9y ago

I'm a fan of this for sites that don't include the full-text of the article: http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ It sucks that the content producer doesn't get any ad revenue, but it also sucks that the only way they can get paid involves tracking me and building a profile despite my wishes. On the other hand, I've found that non-profits / independently-funded researchers produce most of the best RSS feeds, and I happily donate to the non-profits.

rhizome 9y ago

Moving to snippets was a bummer when many RSS sites stopped doing full feeds (I remember it being kind of a wave), but eh, ultimately it's been fine and it's still scads better than the alternative of having to visit each site individually, often dealing with autoplay this and popup that.

tedunangst 9y ago

As someone who hosted RSS, but not ads, the reason for doing that was primarily bandwidth related. Serving unchanging content to clients every five minutes is just wasteful. A lot of RSS clients are shit.

baby 9y ago
that's why we had feedburner. Is it still a thing?

baby 9y ago

> RSS is nigh-unusable for many sites now because they only put the first few sentences of an article in the feed It has always been like that for some websites, and I haven't seen an increase of these kind of RSS feeds.

fnl 9y ago

NewsBlur, the reader I mainly use, can fetch that linked web page for you with a single click.