8 ms·

Hosting an RSS feed wouldn't cost much, just saying...

acomjean 4y ago
Agreed. RSS is very underutilized. Do browsers even read it anymore? I should get a feed reader... https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index I went back and it looks like in the article/pdf they're proposing using their (Umass Amherst's) "smalltown" software. https://publicinfrastructure.org/2022/09/28/welcome-to-smalltown/ https://publicinfrastructure.org/2022/09/28/welcome-to-small... which is a Mastodon Fork: https://github.com/chandrn7/smalltown https://github.com/chandrn7/smalltown
- gumby 4y ago
  I use standalone feed readers; some people use aggregators that have their own web interfaces. RSS is my primary way of following the web these days (well has been for a couple of decades). If there's no RSS feed I simply don't follow a site; there usually is.
sp332 4y ago
Not much really isn't the same thing as free.
zamnos 4y ago
The problem is how to find people to follow. Twitter, as a centralized service with a search feature solves that problem in a way that individual sites with RSS feeds can't. Someone I've never interacted with can add a hashtag to their post on Twitter, and I can search for that hashtag, and find their post. If I've never interacted with someone, how do I know to go to their webpage and connect to their RSS feed?
- pjc50 4y ago
  This. The problem is not how many legs the internet stool has, it's the problem of discovery in the "dark forest". You want people to be able to find you, for your outbound communications (self-promotion), and you want people to be able to cold-contact you in circumstances that are useful to you. But if you're not very careful your inbound communications get completely overwhelmed by spam and/or abuse. Discovery is work. Spamblocking is work. Abuse deletion is work. None of which people want to do themselves, so they delegate it to platforms which do it for them.
- flangola7 4y ago
  For some reason Mastodon refuses to offer full text search

Agreed. RSS is very underutilized. Do browsers even read it anymore? I should get a feed reader... https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index I went back and it looks like in the article/pdf they're proposing using their (Umass Amherst's) "smalltown" software. https://publicinfrastructure.org/2022/09/28/welcome-to-smalltown/ https://publicinfrastructure.org/2022/09/28/welcome-to-small... which is a Mastodon Fork: https://github.com/chandrn7/smalltown https://github.com/chandrn7/smalltown

gumby 4y ago
I use standalone feed readers; some people use aggregators that have their own web interfaces. RSS is my primary way of following the web these days (well has been for a couple of decades). If there's no RSS feed I simply don't follow a site; there usually is.

sp332 4y ago

Not much really isn't the same thing as free.

zamnos 4y ago

The problem is how to find people to follow. Twitter, as a centralized service with a search feature solves that problem in a way that individual sites with RSS feeds can't. Someone I've never interacted with can add a hashtag to their post on Twitter, and I can search for that hashtag, and find their post. If I've never interacted with someone, how do I know to go to their webpage and connect to their RSS feed?

pjc50 4y ago
This. The problem is not how many legs the internet stool has, it's the problem of discovery in the "dark forest". You want people to be able to find you, for your outbound communications (self-promotion), and you want people to be able to cold-contact you in circumstances that are useful to you. But if you're not very careful your inbound communications get completely overwhelmed by spam and/or abuse. Discovery is work. Spamblocking is work. Abuse deletion is work. None of which people want to do themselves, so they delegate it to platforms which do it for them.
flangola7 4y ago
For some reason Mastodon refuses to offer full text search