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I believe that there was an agenda to kill RSS, very much like how the auto makers in the United States conspired to kill public transit. I don't buy any of th

I believe that there was an agenda to kill RSS, very much like how the auto makers in the United States conspired to kill public transit. I don't buy any of the arguments not to implement it. I don't think it is too expensive or confusing. I think it is too empowering to users and inconvenient to marketers.

mehdix 5y ago
I think the same. RSS and Atom feeds couldn't be riddled with ads/trackers and dark patterns so they don't generate revenue/control for corporations. However, they are great for the users. Keep them alive people.
mro_name 5y ago
I bet it scared the shit out of Zuck and still does today. Add websub and few more and you have a social network, duh. Decentral. People owned.
- dpeck 5y ago
  this is what Reader was and has always made me even more confused as to why Google killed it off. They had the right start for a unique take on content focused/small group discussion based social networking and the tossed it for “circles”
  - cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
    Google itself is part of Big Tech Social Control. They're not willing to engage in services where they're not ultimately in control, like RSS. They suffered in the short term, but if you've struggled to find the RSS feed for a website or a podcast lately, that's exactly what they were trying to achieve.
    - Yottaweb 5y ago
      [dead]
  - mro_name 5y ago
    and so did facebook (=> remember friendfeed).
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Twitter obviously hates it too.
- ymolodtsov 5y ago
  That's not social network because there's no interaction between entities and most people wouldn't set up a blog.
  - mro_name 5y ago
    > most people wouldn't set up a blog well, that's the unspoken fallacy: becoming active is cumbersome. But that doesn't have to be, it could be as easy as renting a domain and copying a single file. (Plug: https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo) But if taking a breath is too much of an effort, one may well remain unheard.
jdgoesmarching 5y ago
I suppose you could call it an agenda, I think it’s just the consequence of every major social networking platform being incentivized to reduce outgoing links as much as possible to keep everyone in their walled garden of data collection and engagement. At some point we need to stop trying defend the idea that capitalism is good for tech.
- hnuser847 5y ago
  > At some point we need to stop trying defend the idea that capitalism is good for tech. Why would a state-owned social media platform be any better? I can think of numerous ways in which it would be dramatically worse. And if given the choice, do you really think people would choose Fedbook over Facebook?
  - kthejoker2 5y ago
    Why does it need to be "owned" at all? How about Mastodon/Fediverse options? Same convenience of platform features - finding friends, social gaming, comments, likes, etc. - nobody trying to monetize your eyeballs or actively surveil you.
  - mileza 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on your reasons why it would be a bad thing? I think the argument for this is mainly that this would be funded by taxes, so it would not need to rely on advertisements and exhibit the predatory behaviours that Facebook and other social media do.
emodendroket 5y ago
Of course it's not "too expensive" or "too confusing" but the demand is practically nonexistent.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > but the demand is practically nonexistent. You mispelled "the way for me to monetize it is practically non-existent".
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    No I didn't. Go ahead and canvas 100 people and figure out how many of them even know what RSS is, let alone would like to use it.
- prepend 5y ago
  I think the demand is high but doesn’t show up in some dumb ways that people think represents demand. I get tons of requests in my web logs for my RSS feed. And I’m not a big site or anything, just have a scrub personal blog. So that’s lots of demand. I suspect that every platform owner sees their rss requests and sees it as high. So any claims that there’s no demand without clarifying that they don’t get http gets for RSS feeds seems disingenuous to me. “I don’t see any demand for RSS when I ignore looking at all the RSS requests I get tiny site.”
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Do you also conclude from your logs that there is a huge demand for regular users to log in to your Web server through ssh?
    - prepend 5y ago
      Yes, most certainly people sure do want to ssh into my servers.
      - 5y ago
wilcosky 5y ago
Right on.

mehdix 5y ago

I think the same. RSS and Atom feeds couldn't be riddled with ads/trackers and dark patterns so they don't generate revenue/control for corporations. However, they are great for the users. Keep them alive people.

mro_name 5y ago

I bet it scared the shit out of Zuck and still does today. Add websub and few more and you have a social network, duh. Decentral. People owned.

dpeck 5y ago
this is what Reader was and has always made me even more confused as to why Google killed it off. They had the right start for a unique take on content focused/small group discussion based social networking and the tossed it for “circles”
- cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
  Google itself is part of Big Tech Social Control. They're not willing to engage in services where they're not ultimately in control, like RSS. They suffered in the short term, but if you've struggled to find the RSS feed for a website or a podcast lately, that's exactly what they were trying to achieve.
  - Yottaweb 5y ago
    [dead]
- mro_name 5y ago
  and so did facebook (=> remember friendfeed).
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Twitter obviously hates it too.
ymolodtsov 5y ago
That's not social network because there's no interaction between entities and most people wouldn't set up a blog.
- mro_name 5y ago
  > most people wouldn't set up a blog well, that's the unspoken fallacy: becoming active is cumbersome. But that doesn't have to be, it could be as easy as renting a domain and copying a single file. (Plug: https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo) But if taking a breath is too much of an effort, one may well remain unheard.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago

I suppose you could call it an agenda, I think it’s just the consequence of every major social networking platform being incentivized to reduce outgoing links as much as possible to keep everyone in their walled garden of data collection and engagement. At some point we need to stop trying defend the idea that capitalism is good for tech.

hnuser847 5y ago
> At some point we need to stop trying defend the idea that capitalism is good for tech. Why would a state-owned social media platform be any better? I can think of numerous ways in which it would be dramatically worse. And if given the choice, do you really think people would choose Fedbook over Facebook?
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  Why does it need to be "owned" at all? How about Mastodon/Fediverse options? Same convenience of platform features - finding friends, social gaming, comments, likes, etc. - nobody trying to monetize your eyeballs or actively surveil you.
- mileza 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on your reasons why it would be a bad thing? I think the argument for this is mainly that this would be funded by taxes, so it would not need to rely on advertisements and exhibit the predatory behaviours that Facebook and other social media do.

emodendroket 5y ago

Of course it's not "too expensive" or "too confusing" but the demand is practically nonexistent.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> but the demand is practically nonexistent. You mispelled "the way for me to monetize it is practically non-existent".
- emodendroket 5y ago
  No I didn't. Go ahead and canvas 100 people and figure out how many of them even know what RSS is, let alone would like to use it.
prepend 5y ago
I think the demand is high but doesn’t show up in some dumb ways that people think represents demand. I get tons of requests in my web logs for my RSS feed. And I’m not a big site or anything, just have a scrub personal blog. So that’s lots of demand. I suspect that every platform owner sees their rss requests and sees it as high. So any claims that there’s no demand without clarifying that they don’t get http gets for RSS feeds seems disingenuous to me. “I don’t see any demand for RSS when I ignore looking at all the RSS requests I get tiny site.”
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Do you also conclude from your logs that there is a huge demand for regular users to log in to your Web server through ssh?
  - prepend 5y ago
    Yes, most certainly people sure do want to ssh into my servers.
    - 5y ago

wilcosky 5y ago

Right on.