5 ms·

I came of age in the era of budding social media platforms, and that was my primary way to consume feeds and news online for the past 10 years or so (I include

I came of age in the era of budding social media platforms, and that was my primary way to consume feeds and news online for the past 10 years or so (I include reddit in the "social media" category, especially more recently). Now, being older and having witnessed the many many problems that social media companies have exacerbated in society, I’ve started looking for other ways to read what's going on in the world. This search has brought me to RSS. I use the same reader app as the author, and I absolutely love it. No addictive feed design, no ads built to manipulate me based on my mood and scrolling patterns. I hope RSS sticks around.

perardi 6y ago
You kids these days. I started using RSS in, I believe 2003, back when Mac OS X apps looked like this: https://ranchero.com/images/nnw/progress.jpg https://ranchero.com/images/nnw/progress.jpg We synced our RSS feeds via FTP or .Mac, and we liked it.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  For modern macOS and iOS users, Reeder 5 came out about a week ago and is pretty nice. No .Mac syncing, but it does support iCloud! NetNewsWire (from parent comment's screenshot) is also still around. Plenty of great RSS reader options.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    NetNewsWire is even FOSS. It supports only Feedbin (itself FOSS but supports non-self hosted) and Feedly though. I want to self-host. TANSTAAFL and either I get used for profiling/upselling (Feedly) or I need to pay money while I can self host (Feedbin). Reeder 4 is also good, I tried it (for free) right before Reeder 5 got released. It supports a whole lot more than NetNewsWire, including self hosting services FreshRSS, Reader, and Fever (deprecated). It also has support for Pocket. So I went with Reeder and got FreshRSS installed. On Android I settled with FeedMe, but honestly I haven't found a slick one which works with FreshRSS. I could settle with tmux + CLI + Browsh. In that case, consider Newsboat. It supports a myriad of (self-hosted) RSS services. But not the ones Reeder supports...
    - setpatchaddress 6y ago
      The next version of NetNewsWire will have iCloud sync, according to the roadmap. edit: source: https://inessential.com/2020/09/19/netnewswire_5_1_for_mac_feedly_syncing_r https://inessential.com/2020/09/19/netnewswire_5_1_for_mac_f...
      - Fnoord 6y ago
        Yeah, and perhaps more methods (that one's useless for me, YMMV). Its FOSS too, but author doesn't accept money bounty.
  - docbrown 6y ago
    Reeder was a great app even when used on the iPhone 4, granted it was the best one out as the time. I believe Reeder 3 was the final version I bought before phasing out of using RSS. My Main Twitter account was started in 2009 so I think it’s fair to say that by 2013 there was more interesting real-time coverage becoming readily available through other sources instead of a RSS feed. Now, as someone who has not used RSS since then, do all or many websites still have/advertise RSS feeds? I imagine each section now has their own obscure URL instead of a main feed hidden away in menus but I don’t know. Or if modern apps have a Internet-wide search where you can simply time in “News Site X” and it’ll populate their feeds. Twitter has become easy to digest but I’d much rather prefer my news coming in vanilla again.
    - perardi 6y ago
      I use Feedly for my sync backend to various apps. It has a pretty good automagic feed discovery system. Pop in the root URL of the site, and it’s good about discovering the proper feed.
- sdepablos 6y ago
  In 2009 I bought my first smartphone, the HTC Magic. It was also the first smartphone sold by Vodafone Spain, who had zero experience with phones where you could actually use internet, so they offered uncapped contracts. To make things worse: - Android was just a few months old - Apps were not optimized for using as little data as possible - I was REALLY into RSS, with hundred of feeds, and RSS apps where continually polling for changes. The rest is history: my first month with a smartphone - May 2009 - I consumed 10GB of data and I received a few calls from the Vodafone people
- swebs 6y ago
  Funny, looking at that screenshot filled me with nostalgia for a program I've never used.
empiko 6y ago
You need to actively curate your subreddits to get the best experience. When there is a disparity between your subreddits (in number of posts or their flashiness), few subreddits will flood your whole feed with useless junk. E.g. I have subscribed to EarthPorn (I like nice pictures of Earth naturally), and suddenly 50% of my feed becomes panoramas. That is nice to look at for a moment, but it is really bad for your reading. But if you are able to find few relevant subreddits that do not have that many users, it can be actually really great for discovering interesting stuff. You just need to be really aggressive with how you curate your subscriptions.
- swebs 6y ago
  No, we need to just cut our losses with reddit altogether. Each year, it just gets more political and more authoritarian. Even if you find a good subreddit, its only a matter of time before it gets usurped by the usual powermods that each control 300+ subreddits and bans anyone who disagrees. The admins will never do anything about them since it's hundreds of people willing to perform free labor for them.
  - bun_at_work 6y ago
    big fan of FPH? e: Sorry that's a bit weak of a comment. The deal with reddit authoritarianism makes sense. They don't want to support hate-filled communities that promote violence, crime, or misinformation. They are free to do whatever they want. Most of the people I see complaining about reddit had their favorite hate-filled subreddits banned.
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      That's not at all true; most Reddit subs have become their own circlejerk about US politics (even those that you'd think would be far from political), and frankly it's annoying.
    - swebs 6y ago
      You're making a lot of incorrect assumptions. Read the parent comment again. I clearly explained the problems.

perardi 6y ago

You kids these days. I started using RSS in, I believe 2003, back when Mac OS X apps looked like this: https://ranchero.com/images/nnw/progress.jpg https://ranchero.com/images/nnw/progress.jpg We synced our RSS feeds via FTP or .Mac, and we liked it.

wlesieutre 6y ago
For modern macOS and iOS users, Reeder 5 came out about a week ago and is pretty nice. No .Mac syncing, but it does support iCloud! NetNewsWire (from parent comment's screenshot) is also still around. Plenty of great RSS reader options.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  NetNewsWire is even FOSS. It supports only Feedbin (itself FOSS but supports non-self hosted) and Feedly though. I want to self-host. TANSTAAFL and either I get used for profiling/upselling (Feedly) or I need to pay money while I can self host (Feedbin). Reeder 4 is also good, I tried it (for free) right before Reeder 5 got released. It supports a whole lot more than NetNewsWire, including self hosting services FreshRSS, Reader, and Fever (deprecated). It also has support for Pocket. So I went with Reeder and got FreshRSS installed. On Android I settled with FeedMe, but honestly I haven't found a slick one which works with FreshRSS. I could settle with tmux + CLI + Browsh. In that case, consider Newsboat. It supports a myriad of (self-hosted) RSS services. But not the ones Reeder supports...
  - setpatchaddress 6y ago
    The next version of NetNewsWire will have iCloud sync, according to the roadmap. edit: source: https://inessential.com/2020/09/19/netnewswire_5_1_for_mac_feedly_syncing_r https://inessential.com/2020/09/19/netnewswire_5_1_for_mac_f...
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Yeah, and perhaps more methods (that one's useless for me, YMMV). Its FOSS too, but author doesn't accept money bounty.
- docbrown 6y ago
  Reeder was a great app even when used on the iPhone 4, granted it was the best one out as the time. I believe Reeder 3 was the final version I bought before phasing out of using RSS. My Main Twitter account was started in 2009 so I think it’s fair to say that by 2013 there was more interesting real-time coverage becoming readily available through other sources instead of a RSS feed. Now, as someone who has not used RSS since then, do all or many websites still have/advertise RSS feeds? I imagine each section now has their own obscure URL instead of a main feed hidden away in menus but I don’t know. Or if modern apps have a Internet-wide search where you can simply time in “News Site X” and it’ll populate their feeds. Twitter has become easy to digest but I’d much rather prefer my news coming in vanilla again.
  - perardi 6y ago
    I use Feedly for my sync backend to various apps. It has a pretty good automagic feed discovery system. Pop in the root URL of the site, and it’s good about discovering the proper feed.
sdepablos 6y ago
In 2009 I bought my first smartphone, the HTC Magic. It was also the first smartphone sold by Vodafone Spain, who had zero experience with phones where you could actually use internet, so they offered uncapped contracts. To make things worse: - Android was just a few months old - Apps were not optimized for using as little data as possible - I was REALLY into RSS, with hundred of feeds, and RSS apps where continually polling for changes. The rest is history: my first month with a smartphone - May 2009 - I consumed 10GB of data and I received a few calls from the Vodafone people
swebs 6y ago
Funny, looking at that screenshot filled me with nostalgia for a program I've never used.

empiko 6y ago

You need to actively curate your subreddits to get the best experience. When there is a disparity between your subreddits (in number of posts or their flashiness), few subreddits will flood your whole feed with useless junk. E.g. I have subscribed to EarthPorn (I like nice pictures of Earth naturally), and suddenly 50% of my feed becomes panoramas. That is nice to look at for a moment, but it is really bad for your reading. But if you are able to find few relevant subreddits that do not have that many users, it can be actually really great for discovering interesting stuff. You just need to be really aggressive with how you curate your subscriptions.

swebs 6y ago
No, we need to just cut our losses with reddit altogether. Each year, it just gets more political and more authoritarian. Even if you find a good subreddit, its only a matter of time before it gets usurped by the usual powermods that each control 300+ subreddits and bans anyone who disagrees. The admins will never do anything about them since it's hundreds of people willing to perform free labor for them.
- bun_at_work 6y ago
  big fan of FPH? e: Sorry that's a bit weak of a comment. The deal with reddit authoritarianism makes sense. They don't want to support hate-filled communities that promote violence, crime, or misinformation. They are free to do whatever they want. Most of the people I see complaining about reddit had their favorite hate-filled subreddits banned.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    That's not at all true; most Reddit subs have become their own circlejerk about US politics (even those that you'd think would be far from political), and frankly it's annoying.
  - swebs 6y ago
    You're making a lot of incorrect assumptions. Read the parent comment again. I clearly explained the problems.