5 ms·

RSS as a Facebook alternative is like suggesting a fresh caesar salad, a medium-rare steak tenderloin, and a glass of seven-year-old french cabernet as an alter

RSS as a Facebook alternative is like suggesting a fresh caesar salad, a medium-rare steak tenderloin, and a glass of seven-year-old french cabernet as an alternative to some chunks of roof shingles and pond water. Like… yeah, it's good, give it a try. Do recommend. four and a half out of five stars.

threatofrain 6y ago
Every time I’ve seen someone retain the old ways of RSS it always looks like an ADD workflow. Very little different than Twitter.
- aendruk 6y ago
  Looking back, at least my “old ways” of using RSS involved a lot of FOMO and inevitable information overload. A key lesson I’ve since learned is to be much more minimalist and deliberate about what I subscribe to. The news feed under my control now feels serene relative to the adversarial offerings of major social media outlets.
  - naravara 6y ago
    One thing I wish RSS readers were better at is more granular controls over how they do workflows and notifications. Podcasts actually do this well, but regular old text-RSS does not. There are some feeds where I just do not care about anything older than a day or 3 and would rather it just automatically ignores them on refresh. There are some feeds where I prefer them held indefinitely. I'd love a master dashboard where I can program this in on a per-feed basis. There's also feeds where grouping matters. Like with webcomics where chronology is important and I'm a few issues behind, I'd like them to be presented in chronological order and grouped together. In ones where it's not I'd prefer them as part of the feed. And then there's the tendency to collapse all content into one format. There's blogs where visuals are very important and I'd prefer they be displayed in the page's default and there's others where I'd prefer a "reader" view. Some apps design around it, but many still don't.
- anonporridge 6y ago
  The alternative is trusting someone (or something) else, who's values, motives, and incentives are rarely obvious, to curate your news for you. Even if you could find a curator that you have significant faith in, eventually, they will become a centralized target that powerful interests can carrot or stick in various ways to push their interests into your curated feed.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    You’re 100% describing how news organizations operate, that are source of the actual news. They have same initiatives. Skipping middle man curator leaves you with same fundamental problems.
- HKH2 6y ago
  There are RSS readers that allow you to use blocklists to filter out articles (using regex too).
- asdff 6y ago
  I think the great power of RSS is being able to quickly sift through information. I use newsboat, so every title is on a single line and information density is therefore at its max. I can quickly skim through a day's worth of news articles from dozens of sources, blog posts, youtube channels, journal articles, pubmed search hits, hacker news posts, and reddit posts, in hardly any time compared to visiting these platforms individually and sifting through one at a time. For my hundreds of feeds, I get through them in like 10 minutes if nothing peaks my interest, then I'm done with the internet for the day. It's so liberating to be free of platforms that insist on the infinite scrolling and other dark patterns, such as bloated pages full of empty space rather than content, that force you to spend more time engaged/addicted.
dsr_ 6y ago
I don't understand why people use FB as a source of news and information. It's terrible at that. RSS is an excellent protocol for that, and has some really good tools. What FB used to be good-ish at and is now mediocre at is being a social feed of friends and family. Dreamwidth is better at that than FB is, but FB's got the network effect of users already. Convincing people to switch is problematic.
- tsfranke 6y ago
  The farmers down the road don't know how to post what's available at their farm stand via RSS. Facebook is far simpler.
  - naravara 6y ago
    Wordpress has an RSS feed by default. If they can tweet or post to a blog they can post to RSS. It's just about reaching a user base.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  RSS doesn't give you reliable access to first-hand accounts, citizen livestreams, the people and their groups directly involved in events, or a network of other observers actively searching for and sharing from sources you would otherwise never have heard from or of. RSS brings you the publications you're aware of, and maybe a few bloggers with the time, money, and energy to maintain a blog. I can't ask a journalist for more details or check their work. I don't know how well they translated the niche knowledge required to understand the story for public consumption. Facebook comment sections can be a cesspool, but with groups you can usually find an actual subject matter expert who's engaged with what's happening and is engaging as an interested observer (not a preacher) that you can drop a line for more details. RSS is about passive consumption. It has its place, but it can't replace the tools Facebook give (engaged) users to understand the world better.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    This era is all about reshuffling the expert / data source distribution. There used to be a semi static structure of vetted journalism who would bet their reputation on a certain amount of quality.. but now it's not enough and people have the tools so they DIY.. but in the end we'll all need a less random structure .. I think it's exhausting to always be worried about who is a real expert on the matter, are these real time events really what I think they are. New needs the old, old needs the new.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
I’m surprised nobody burned me for this comment, HN usually frowns on snark ;) But I would like to add a constructive note: I’ve been dabbling around the RSS space for a long time, including a ten-year-old feed service and web client. In my opinion, RSS has failed where centralized social media succeeded largely because of discoverability. I’ve put RSS clients in front of plenty of users, and the response is invariably, “okay, now what?” Using a bookmarklet to subscribe to feeds is confusing and unnatural to them. They want getting The Atlantic RSS feed to be as easy as following The Atlantic on Twitter. And they do want to see the “liked” articles of their friends who are fellow readers. To anyone who is trying to make RSS fetch again, I beg them to take the take the social and discoverability issues seriously. Incidentally, I think the Overcast podcast app (remember, podcasts are also RSS) is an ideal model of an in-app directory.
- asdff 6y ago
  inoreader has all of these discovery and social features you mentioned. it's as easy as twitter.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    Hm, haven’t heard of it before. Just gave it a try, kind of hate the design, but the search is very, very good.
    - asdff 6y ago
      You can always export your feeds and import into whatever reader you'd like if you only want to use it for discovery
- HKH2 6y ago
  Flym (OSS, Android) allows you to search for feeds. I'm sure there are others that do too. As for social, the share button is always there. If you want Facebook, why not just use Facebook? You can declare RSS a failure when sites stop offering it.
- pqs 6y ago

threatofrain 6y ago

Every time I’ve seen someone retain the old ways of RSS it always looks like an ADD workflow. Very little different than Twitter.

aendruk 6y ago
Looking back, at least my “old ways” of using RSS involved a lot of FOMO and inevitable information overload. A key lesson I’ve since learned is to be much more minimalist and deliberate about what I subscribe to. The news feed under my control now feels serene relative to the adversarial offerings of major social media outlets.
- naravara 6y ago
  One thing I wish RSS readers were better at is more granular controls over how they do workflows and notifications. Podcasts actually do this well, but regular old text-RSS does not. There are some feeds where I just do not care about anything older than a day or 3 and would rather it just automatically ignores them on refresh. There are some feeds where I prefer them held indefinitely. I'd love a master dashboard where I can program this in on a per-feed basis. There's also feeds where grouping matters. Like with webcomics where chronology is important and I'm a few issues behind, I'd like them to be presented in chronological order and grouped together. In ones where it's not I'd prefer them as part of the feed. And then there's the tendency to collapse all content into one format. There's blogs where visuals are very important and I'd prefer they be displayed in the page's default and there's others where I'd prefer a "reader" view. Some apps design around it, but many still don't.
anonporridge 6y ago
The alternative is trusting someone (or something) else, who's values, motives, and incentives are rarely obvious, to curate your news for you. Even if you could find a curator that you have significant faith in, eventually, they will become a centralized target that powerful interests can carrot or stick in various ways to push their interests into your curated feed.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  You’re 100% describing how news organizations operate, that are source of the actual news. They have same initiatives. Skipping middle man curator leaves you with same fundamental problems.
HKH2 6y ago
There are RSS readers that allow you to use blocklists to filter out articles (using regex too).
asdff 6y ago
I think the great power of RSS is being able to quickly sift through information. I use newsboat, so every title is on a single line and information density is therefore at its max. I can quickly skim through a day's worth of news articles from dozens of sources, blog posts, youtube channels, journal articles, pubmed search hits, hacker news posts, and reddit posts, in hardly any time compared to visiting these platforms individually and sifting through one at a time. For my hundreds of feeds, I get through them in like 10 minutes if nothing peaks my interest, then I'm done with the internet for the day. It's so liberating to be free of platforms that insist on the infinite scrolling and other dark patterns, such as bloated pages full of empty space rather than content, that force you to spend more time engaged/addicted.

dsr_ 6y ago

I don't understand why people use FB as a source of news and information. It's terrible at that. RSS is an excellent protocol for that, and has some really good tools. What FB used to be good-ish at and is now mediocre at is being a social feed of friends and family. Dreamwidth is better at that than FB is, but FB's got the network effect of users already. Convincing people to switch is problematic.

tsfranke 6y ago
The farmers down the road don't know how to post what's available at their farm stand via RSS. Facebook is far simpler.
- naravara 6y ago
  Wordpress has an RSS feed by default. If they can tweet or post to a blog they can post to RSS. It's just about reaching a user base.
crocodiletears 6y ago
RSS doesn't give you reliable access to first-hand accounts, citizen livestreams, the people and their groups directly involved in events, or a network of other observers actively searching for and sharing from sources you would otherwise never have heard from or of. RSS brings you the publications you're aware of, and maybe a few bloggers with the time, money, and energy to maintain a blog. I can't ask a journalist for more details or check their work. I don't know how well they translated the niche knowledge required to understand the story for public consumption. Facebook comment sections can be a cesspool, but with groups you can usually find an actual subject matter expert who's engaged with what's happening and is engaging as an interested observer (not a preacher) that you can drop a line for more details. RSS is about passive consumption. It has its place, but it can't replace the tools Facebook give (engaged) users to understand the world better.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  This era is all about reshuffling the expert / data source distribution. There used to be a semi static structure of vetted journalism who would bet their reputation on a certain amount of quality.. but now it's not enough and people have the tools so they DIY.. but in the end we'll all need a less random structure .. I think it's exhausting to always be worried about who is a real expert on the matter, are these real time events really what I think they are. New needs the old, old needs the new.

Eric_WVGG 6y ago

I’m surprised nobody burned me for this comment, HN usually frowns on snark ;) But I would like to add a constructive note: I’ve been dabbling around the RSS space for a long time, including a ten-year-old feed service and web client. In my opinion, RSS has failed where centralized social media succeeded largely because of discoverability. I’ve put RSS clients in front of plenty of users, and the response is invariably, “okay, now what?” Using a bookmarklet to subscribe to feeds is confusing and unnatural to them. They want getting The Atlantic RSS feed to be as easy as following The Atlantic on Twitter. And they do want to see the “liked” articles of their friends who are fellow readers. To anyone who is trying to make RSS fetch again, I beg them to take the take the social and discoverability issues seriously. Incidentally, I think the Overcast podcast app (remember, podcasts are also RSS) is an ideal model of an in-app directory.

asdff 6y ago
inoreader has all of these discovery and social features you mentioned. it's as easy as twitter.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  Hm, haven’t heard of it before. Just gave it a try, kind of hate the design, but the search is very, very good.
  - asdff 6y ago
    You can always export your feeds and import into whatever reader you'd like if you only want to use it for discovery
HKH2 6y ago
Flym (OSS, Android) allows you to search for feeds. I'm sure there are others that do too. As for social, the share button is always there. If you want Facebook, why not just use Facebook? You can declare RSS a failure when sites stop offering it.
pqs 6y ago