4 ms·

> lose the ability to control the feel of the post. Agreed, rss was popular with people who wanted to decrease noise. > RSS also kills monetization, since you

by adolph 2mo ago

> lose the ability to control the feel of the post. Agreed, rss was popular with people who wanted to decrease noise. > RSS also kills monetization, since you can't have ads This was the killer and the dumb part, because it could, but monetization sofar means integration with all the bad parts of the Internet that desire to track people.

colesantiago 2mo ago
So what is the solution here other than ads? Most people who use RSS, use it because they don't want to go to a website (filled with ads) and they want content 100% for free.
- throwawsy7273 2mo ago
  I have a feeling that it used to be much more valuable to send users to your site in the past, than today where a lot of traffic comes from search/ads/social media. Perhaps it is time to revisit a distribution model, where the full content of the article is available for paid users inside the reader itself. The RSS reader would require a subscription and pay RSS feed providers a share of the subscription price. A sort of distributed spotify model.
gkoberger 2mo ago
For what it's worth, and there's lots of reasons this hasn't and won't happen, I think micropayments are the solution here. But until that happens, ads fill a middle ground: users don't want to pay and creators want to be paid.
- adolph 2mo ago
  The upper level of YouTube creators use direct product placement in their videos. This is direct content and ad integration that could be part of the content delivered via RSS as opposed to tracking systems and generic ad placement that cannot. The recent @patio11 Complex Systems podcast lays out how it works: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/justin-kuiper-youtube/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/justin-kuiper...
  - gkoberger 2mo ago
    I agree (although I do find ad breaks in text to undermine the content more than visual mediums, for whatever reason). But RSS made tracking very hard. And while I know that's your point (not wanting to be tracked), one reason it works in YouTube videos is there's a lot of analytics that can be used to advocate for rates (and track what's skipped, what's watched, etc).

by adolph 2mo ago

colesantiago 2mo ago

So what is the solution here other than ads? Most people who use RSS, use it because they don't want to go to a website (filled with ads) and they want content 100% for free.

throwawsy7273 2mo ago
I have a feeling that it used to be much more valuable to send users to your site in the past, than today where a lot of traffic comes from search/ads/social media. Perhaps it is time to revisit a distribution model, where the full content of the article is available for paid users inside the reader itself. The RSS reader would require a subscription and pay RSS feed providers a share of the subscription price. A sort of distributed spotify model.

gkoberger 2mo ago

For what it's worth, and there's lots of reasons this hasn't and won't happen, I think micropayments are the solution here. But until that happens, ads fill a middle ground: users don't want to pay and creators want to be paid.

adolph 2mo ago
The upper level of YouTube creators use direct product placement in their videos. This is direct content and ad integration that could be part of the content delivered via RSS as opposed to tracking systems and generic ad placement that cannot. The recent @patio11 Complex Systems podcast lays out how it works: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/justin-kuiper-youtube/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/justin-kuiper...
- gkoberger 2mo ago
  I agree (although I do find ad breaks in text to undermine the content more than visual mediums, for whatever reason). But RSS made tracking very hard. And while I know that's your point (not wanting to be tracked), one reason it works in YouTube videos is there's a lot of analytics that can be used to advocate for rates (and track what's skipped, what's watched, etc).