4 ms·

It’s not that they don’t like it. It’s more like they don’t care, or it’s not on their radar.

by donohoe 5mo ago

devonkim 5mo ago
Both ideas can be true. It’s not on their radar because despite their popularity in consumer space they can’t find a business purpose that aligns with their self interests that require such user information. If I’m running a free podcast, in contrast, I might be happy anyone’s even bothering to visit and listen to what I have to say compared to who they are and whether I can assign a monetary value to their attention because spending money on something without clear, intentional, measurable ROI is anathema to our predominant modus operandi in business
renegat0x0 5mo ago
Agree to disagree. I think many platform did support RSS, or API, but at some time it was dropped. It is not that hard to provide RSS. It is not like it has to be implemented from scratch. It is just dropped by platforms. There must be reasons for dropping. One may argue it is not worth it, but even to drop functionality there needs to be a decision from management. The management always think about money. Is RSS or API monetized correctly? Free? No? Then we drop it, because data from algorithms serving user contents can be easily monetized. Just follow the money, the oldest truth.
- jesuslop 5mo ago
  Not just no money in, but actual money out. RSS is a hole in user funnel inflow to platform.
- acdha 5mo ago
  Also, scraping was a problem for publishers: if your site was popular, copy-cats would show up republishing your work with minimal credit. That said, this seems quaint in the modern era where trillion-dollar tech companies are doing that to publishers now, too.
  - donohoe 5mo ago
    No. That wasn’t a concern with RSS for publishers. Most publishers have RSS still or feeds. Scraping index pages continues to be trivial.
    - acdha 5mo ago
      Yes, it was a concern. You can say that some people made their peace with it but if you’d been there at the time, it was absolutely mentioned.
shiandow 5mo ago
Same difference really. Though some seem to go out of their way to make RSS impossible.

It’s not that they don’t like it. It’s more like they don’t care, or it’s not on their radar.

by donohoe 5mo ago

It’s not that they don’t like it. It’s more like they don’t care, or it’s not on their radar.

Both ideas can be true. It’s not on their radar because despite their popularity in consumer space they can’t find a business purpose that aligns with their self interests that require such user information. If I’m running a free podcast, in contrast, I might be happy anyone’s even bothering to visit and listen to what I have to say compared to who they are and whether I can assign a monetary value to their attention because spending money on something without clear, intentional, measurable ROI is anathema to our predominant modus operandi in business

renegat0x0 5mo ago

Agree to disagree. I think many platform did support RSS, or API, but at some time it was dropped. It is not that hard to provide RSS. It is not like it has to be implemented from scratch. It is just dropped by platforms. There must be reasons for dropping. One may argue it is not worth it, but even to drop functionality there needs to be a decision from management. The management always think about money. Is RSS or API monetized correctly? Free? No? Then we drop it, because data from algorithms serving user contents can be easily monetized. Just follow the money, the oldest truth.

jesuslop 5mo ago
Not just no money in, but actual money out. RSS is a hole in user funnel inflow to platform.
acdha 5mo ago
Also, scraping was a problem for publishers: if your site was popular, copy-cats would show up republishing your work with minimal credit. That said, this seems quaint in the modern era where trillion-dollar tech companies are doing that to publishers now, too.
- donohoe 5mo ago
  No. That wasn’t a concern with RSS for publishers. Most publishers have RSS still or feeds. Scraping index pages continues to be trivial.
  - acdha 5mo ago
    Yes, it was a concern. You can say that some people made their peace with it but if you’d been there at the time, it was absolutely mentioned.

shiandow 5mo ago

Same difference really. Though some seem to go out of their way to make RSS impossible.