4 ms·

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a sn

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.

dhosek 2mo ago
I’ve encountered feeds that do this and I tend to not keep those subscriptions long. That said, some feeds often have content that doesn’t present well in my feed reader and I’ll end up clicking to view the web presentation What I miss is that back when Safari had RSS built in was I used to just open all the new articles in tabs from an RSS list in my bookmark bar. This is the experience I really would like to recover, being able to just get a set of tabs that represent new posts at sites that I want to follow. Maybe I’ll vibe code this for myself now that I’ve given in and turned to the dark side with Claude.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Doesn't Firefox still have this? It's a special kind of bookmark folder populated by RSS.
  - defrost 2mo ago
    Moz Support says "Firefox's built-in support for web feeds and Live Bookmarks ended in December 2018 with version 64." I checked as I use the Feedbro extension in Firefox and Chrome family browsers for holding and updating a tree of RSS feeds and thought I'd missed a built in FF feature :/
SanjayMehta 2mo ago
There are some RSS feeds which let you read even their paywalled content completely, without ads. I'm guessing by accident, not design.
singpolyma3 2mo ago
Also you can literally insert ads into the feed content
- TheFlyingFish 2mo ago
  Feed aggregators (inoreader, feedly) make this difficult, though. One request may end up serving any number of end users, so you can't personalize ads the same way. Good, you might say, and I wouldn't disagree, but Google et al sure would.
watwut 2mo ago
Google dont care about ads on their page. They care about ads on google pages.
jjav 2mo ago
> So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page. Right here, that's how HN RSS feed works. I only follow HN through the RSS feed. But it only gives the title and links to content and comments. But for HN use case, that's ok IMO. Based on title I can decide if the comments might be worth it and follow the link.

dhosek 2mo ago

I’ve encountered feeds that do this and I tend to not keep those subscriptions long. That said, some feeds often have content that doesn’t present well in my feed reader and I’ll end up clicking to view the web presentation What I miss is that back when Safari had RSS built in was I used to just open all the new articles in tabs from an RSS list in my bookmark bar. This is the experience I really would like to recover, being able to just get a set of tabs that represent new posts at sites that I want to follow. Maybe I’ll vibe code this for myself now that I’ve given in and turned to the dark side with Claude.

inigyou 2mo ago
Doesn't Firefox still have this? It's a special kind of bookmark folder populated by RSS.
- defrost 2mo ago
  Moz Support says "Firefox's built-in support for web feeds and Live Bookmarks ended in December 2018 with version 64." I checked as I use the Feedbro extension in Firefox and Chrome family browsers for holding and updating a tree of RSS feeds and thought I'd missed a built in FF feature :/

SanjayMehta 2mo ago

There are some RSS feeds which let you read even their paywalled content completely, without ads. I'm guessing by accident, not design.

singpolyma3 2mo ago

Also you can literally insert ads into the feed content

TheFlyingFish 2mo ago
Feed aggregators (inoreader, feedly) make this difficult, though. One request may end up serving any number of end users, so you can't personalize ads the same way. Good, you might say, and I wouldn't disagree, but Google et al sure would.

watwut 2mo ago

Google dont care about ads on their page. They care about ads on google pages.

jjav 2mo ago

> So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page. Right here, that's how HN RSS feed works. I only follow HN through the RSS feed. But it only gives the title and links to content and comments. But for HN use case, that's ok IMO. Based on title I can decide if the comments might be worth it and follow the link.