This is a very odd comparison and I think a straw man, unless you just misunderstand. Everything you mention is internal plumbing, so of course people don’t nee

This is a very odd comparison and I think a straw man, unless you just misunderstand. Everything you mention is internal plumbing, so of course people don’t need to care about it, by design. HTTP however does have a very “in your face” interface, which are the hypertext links themselves. People know the system exists because it is actually right there in their face. In RSS, maybe the xml is the plumbing, but there’s no clear and obvious way to access it, so much so that most people wouldn’t even know it exists. It’s hard to build and justify a system if a majority of people have no idea about it.