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I've been a heavy user of RSS for a really long time. I can't imagine a world without it, and it frustrates me that it never took off with regular people in the

I've been a heavy user of RSS for a really long time. I can't imagine a world without it, and it frustrates me that it never took off with regular people in the way it has with those in the technical world. Initially I just used NetNewsWire -- a beloved reader for the Mac that's had an amusing development life cycle -- but I moved to Google Reader and a variety of clients when that existed. When Google killed Reader, I moved to Feedbin for a back end, and found their web interface plenty good enough for me. On my phone and iPad, I use Reeder.

frankfrankfrank 6y ago
I get the sense that you may not be old enough to remember when the majority of people who used the internet used RSS feeds to consume their news and information consumption. That all changed with mostly facebook and Zuckerberg's charge to have "Facebook replace the internet". We are now totally shifted from a distributed consumer driven information market to a centralized autocratic supplier system (it's not even a market, but rather just centralized propagation of regime approved narrative). I totally agree with the subject author and likely you, but I would go even further, that RSS or a similar user controlled distributed source subscription model is the only way that humanity can regain control over its freedom of information. And time is clearly running out. Regardless of what people may think of the likes of Elon Musk, the clear move (regardless of why) to the privatization of the internet through his skynet, or was it skylink???, project will lead to the atrophy of what is at least theoretically still a public internet, even though corporations have essentially totally coöpted it.
- loup-vaillant 6y ago
  Starlink.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  I'm 50. There was NEVER a point when RSS was used by the majority of Net users, since it was introduced (just before the turn of the century) YEARS after the general public got net access (ie, the September that Never Ended, now over 10,000 days ago). It has always been the province of the somewhat nerdy. The closest it ever got to mass adoption, ironically, was the support it got by way of Google Reader.

frankfrankfrank 6y ago

I get the sense that you may not be old enough to remember when the majority of people who used the internet used RSS feeds to consume their news and information consumption. That all changed with mostly facebook and Zuckerberg's charge to have "Facebook replace the internet". We are now totally shifted from a distributed consumer driven information market to a centralized autocratic supplier system (it's not even a market, but rather just centralized propagation of regime approved narrative). I totally agree with the subject author and likely you, but I would go even further, that RSS or a similar user controlled distributed source subscription model is the only way that humanity can regain control over its freedom of information. And time is clearly running out. Regardless of what people may think of the likes of Elon Musk, the clear move (regardless of why) to the privatization of the internet through his skynet, or was it skylink???, project will lead to the atrophy of what is at least theoretically still a public internet, even though corporations have essentially totally coöpted it.

loup-vaillant 6y ago
Starlink.
ubermonkey 6y ago
I'm 50. There was NEVER a point when RSS was used by the majority of Net users, since it was introduced (just before the turn of the century) YEARS after the general public got net access (ie, the September that Never Ended, now over 10,000 days ago). It has always been the province of the somewhat nerdy. The closest it ever got to mass adoption, ironically, was the support it got by way of Google Reader.