RSS is still the best way to track the news on the web, and these RSS readers can keep you right up to date.

Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.

Unfortunately, RSS is no longer how most of us consume “content.” (Google famously killed its beloved Google Reader more than a decade ago.) It’s now the norm to check social media or the front pages of many different sites to see what’s new. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: Especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms choosing what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the internet. Here’s a primer on what RSS can (still!) do for you, and how to get started with it, even in this late era of online existence.

  • FrankTheHealer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    RSS is fucking amazing.

    I use Feeder on Android and QuiteRSS on my laptop and desktop. I use it for everything from local news and tech news, to YouTube subscriptions. It’s great. Forget social media with enshitification and profit driven motives. RSS is all you need.

    • ruplicant@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Feeder is a perfectly functional RSS reader for Android, and the only updated and straight forward one on F-Droid when I decided to set up my feeds, and an app I’ve seen suggested on Lemmy several times when there’s mention of RSS…but why doesn’t it have groups? I’ve got my general news mixed with tech news, cluttered in between the rest of it

      this thread made me re-check and there are some new options in there and at least one will let you group the feeds: Read You

  • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    When I left Reddit I fired up Feedly and did some house cleaning. Still looking for more decent feeds.

    Here are some of mine: XKCD, Nature, Slashdot, New Scientist, FactCheck, Neurologica, Science Based Medicine

    What else you got?

    • thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      All youtube channels have their own feeds, but they’re not obvious to find. The first part of the URL looks like this:

      https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

      Go to the channel’s home page and search the page source for “channel_id=” (with a long string of numbers and letters after it, often starting with a “U”) then paste the ID after the equal sign. The channel id looks something like this: UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg

      • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        You would need that if YouTube actually sent notifications like it’s supposed to. So this will come in handy.

      • AgnosticMammal@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        This might be useful for their community posts - is there a seperate feed for them or are they included in the videos feed?

        I never see the community posts anywhere except for the home page & on the creator’s page. Which makes it frustrating because I only stay in the subscriptions page - so I only get updates if they upload a video.

      • Plopp@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        Hang on, do you or anyone else know if it’s possible to add playlists to RSS in this way? There are channels that I overall don’t want to watch but that have a specific playlist I want to follow.

  • _number8_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    i remember in high school (2010s) i tried using RSS but increasingly the feed wouldn’t even have the article, just the title and the link so you’d have to visit their website. especially obnoxious because my obnoxious school district filtered approx 90% of the internet (for shocking reasons like ‘forums’ or ‘TV/entertainment’ or ‘sports’ or ‘media’)

  • udon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    The problem with most rss readers IMHO is that they lack a decent filter function. ttrss had great filters, but I stopped using it when they switched their dev process (I think to docker at the time, which I couldn’t use with my hoster). Now using rss guard, not too happy but surviving.

    RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise. If you can filter only what you care about, great. Otherwise it’s just information overload.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise

      I think you nailed it there. Curating is too much of a hassle.

  • set_secret@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    i find it frustrating if i can’t immediately tell the poster of a site their content is wrong or sucks or is generally bad. therefore social media is my only option, because the world must know my valuable contributions…🤌🤌

  • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      I’m still finding rather many RSS feeds, though there’s few buttons these days. Ideally, you want something that auto-discovers feeds on a webpage.

    • nadir@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Or if they do, it’s not the full article. Which I get, them being in the business of selling ads and all.

      • harsh3466@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        This is why I stopped using rss. I fucking hate seeing an headline I’m interested in, clicking to expand and then having to click through to the site to read the article, dismiss the goddam email list overlay, fight with the stupid paywall, and then close the tab out of frustration.

        I miss the days of actually reading articles in my rss feed reader.

    • CurlyMoustache@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Perhaps I’m just an old 40 year old fart, but the Internet was better before. I miss the 00s and the 10s. Now it’s just paywalls, LLM generated bullshit, and search results from SEO orgies

  • t0fr@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    Google Reader died more than a decade ago? oh my jeebus, I feel ooooooooollllld

  • harmsy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    RSS was great. I’ve still got a deep grudge over the removal of Live Bookmarks from Firefox. That was how I kept up with the various webcomics I was reading at the time. All I had to do was just check on all my little orange drop-down menus to see if any new posts were up, and I was golden. Now I have to keep extra tabs open and try not to bury them under all the other tabs I open up and forget about. >_<

  • abies_exarchia@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I never had a good way to ingest info, but i setup a self-hosted FreshRSS instance a few months ago and it’s completely changed how i consume information for the better. I spend a lot less time scrolling through shit that never interested me much in the first place

  • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    The number of sites that still supports RSS is impressive when you think about how niche it is right now. I was surprised when I saw some big comics sites had it.

  • gndagreborn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I’m gonna shill for FreshRSS and Feed Me. Been a fantastic combination so far.

    Self hosting FreshRSS allows me to curate shit I care about. Even better, it’s private aggregation. Sometimes though, I miss the conversation around these topics. For that, Lemmy exists.