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RSS users aren’t seem to be concerned with the single most popular way content creators make money: by displaying ads. While there are RSS-compatible solutions

RSS users aren’t seem to be concerned with the single most popular way content creators make money: by displaying ads. While there are RSS-compatible solutions for that (like AdSense in-feed ads), it is obvious that there is not enough financial incentive for content creators and platforms to continue supporting RSS. From consumer perspective, I’m writing this from Safari on iPad, and there is no way to see that RSS is present on the page, neither there is a way to subscribe to RSS without special plugins. Which tells me demand on consumer side also does not justify keeping these features up. The only reason RSS is alive today is because it’s dirt cheap to implement, and is supported out-of-the-box by most web development frameworks.

betwixthewires 5y ago
You're right, we aren't concerned with ads. We don't want ads. The problem isn't ads though, the problem is targeted advertising. there's absolutely nothing about RSS which prevents a person from sponsoring products, shilling merch, or any other form of advertising in line in their article or in the description of their video or even in their video or podcast. Thinking these features disappear from client applications because of user demand is very naive. These client applications are usually designed by the same companies that want you to see ads because they sell ads to the sites you visit. RSS dying was no accident. > The only reason RSS is alive today is because it’s dirt cheap to implement, and is supported out-of-the-box by most web development frameworks. And thank god for that. Isn't that how it should be? User empowering tools should be frictionlessly available and ubiquitous. If they're used because they're always there, I can't come up with a more frictionless UX than that.
- smugglerFlynn 5y ago
  Problem with targeted advertising is that it won’t magically go away because end users don’t want ads. This whole business model has at least four more sides: content creators, content platforms (like Facebook/Medium), infrastructure services (like programmatic ad platforms), and advertisers. This whole model is mostly frictionless for everyone except end users, who get abused by targeted ads. (one can argue that even for end users this model provides value: an ability to browse all this content without paying to anyone; if we do not consider attention a form of currency, that is) Maybe in the future we will shift from this ad-driven model, and that would resurrect RSS, semantic web and other good things which are now mostly gone due to advertisement-driven web. One can only hope.

betwixthewires 5y ago

You're right, we aren't concerned with ads. We don't want ads. The problem isn't ads though, the problem is targeted advertising. there's absolutely nothing about RSS which prevents a person from sponsoring products, shilling merch, or any other form of advertising in line in their article or in the description of their video or even in their video or podcast. Thinking these features disappear from client applications because of user demand is very naive. These client applications are usually designed by the same companies that want you to see ads because they sell ads to the sites you visit. RSS dying was no accident. > The only reason RSS is alive today is because it’s dirt cheap to implement, and is supported out-of-the-box by most web development frameworks. And thank god for that. Isn't that how it should be? User empowering tools should be frictionlessly available and ubiquitous. If they're used because they're always there, I can't come up with a more frictionless UX than that.

smugglerFlynn 5y ago
Problem with targeted advertising is that it won’t magically go away because end users don’t want ads. This whole business model has at least four more sides: content creators, content platforms (like Facebook/Medium), infrastructure services (like programmatic ad platforms), and advertisers. This whole model is mostly frictionless for everyone except end users, who get abused by targeted ads. (one can argue that even for end users this model provides value: an ability to browse all this content without paying to anyone; if we do not consider attention a form of currency, that is) Maybe in the future we will shift from this ad-driven model, and that would resurrect RSS, semantic web and other good things which are now mostly gone due to advertisement-driven web. One can only hope.