Social media is shit, and will always be shit, because the people who make social platforms are petty authoritarians bent on punishing the world because they didn’t get enough pussy in high school. It is not a substitute for a well-curated collection of RSS feeds.
Unfortunately the display of content in different RSS readers is different.
I understand that RSS is for displaying text and photo information, but the lack of video and audio playback in various app is disappointing.
In addition, it is often necessary to configure the server part to scan commercial sites. This is something that beginners cannot handle.
Unfortunately the display of content in different RSS readers is different.
Why is this a problem? I consider this a strength; choose the reader that works best for you.
I understand that RSS is for displaying text and photo information, but the lack of video and audio playback in various app is disappointing.
You know that podcasts are basically RSS feeds with extensions, right?
In addition, it is often necessary to configure the server part to scan commercial sites.
Why is this necessary?
The answer to your question. There are news channels that are only on social networks. Or bloggers who publish insider information about new equipment. As far as I know, you can’t do without scraping on the server if you want to receive news from social networks.
Except for off-the-shelf solutions like Nitter instants.
For ongoing series of published articles about modern times
Anecdata. I was hooked by RSS right from the outset in the mid-2000s. I used Google Reader for a bit and Netvibes for several years. It was amazing. This was the way the open internet was supposed to be. I had a dashboard to follow a whole bunch of cool sites and blogs, with not a scummy ad in sight. At one point there was even this cool tool whose name I forget which would filter RSS items, by means of multiple dials, based on their social-media buzziness. This was obviously a dangerous slope to be on, but at the time it felt safe enough and it was incredibly powerful at fine-tuning the signal. Again: all without any advertising or spying.
Then websites began to drop their feeds. Stuff began to break. I succumbed to the prevailing wisdom that RSS was on the way out, and tried other things. Lots of things, including Twitter and Pocket and Reddit and Google Alerts and probably even email at one point. Nothing came close to the functionality and freedom of RSS.
So, to cut the story short, I went back to RSS. It hadn’t gone away after all. In fact, the rot seems to have stopped. Major blogging software like Wordpress still provides it, obviously. But so does Youtube, if you hunt a bit. Some news sites have even improved their offering. Maybe they finally grasped that RSS is like email: it’s an ally against big tech domination. And for the rest there are now lots of tools to generate RSS feeds on the fly. Right now I use a modified Python script that does this for a couple of news sites I can’t live without. It works great, although this is obviously not a solution for normies.
RSS is just an acronym but the principle is as relevant as ever. There needs to be an open standard for getting a summary of recently-published content on their web. RSS is the plumbing solution that works best and I hope it can be improved and made better still.
As others have said, I don’t visit news websites because it’s more important to be first than correct or even in the ballpark, and with many readers I get to choose what I’m reading with blacklist words or even regex.
Saves me the bother and time of visiting many sites on a regular basis to see what’s new. RSS is delivered to me.
By choosing what I sign up for, I know what I think I’m going to get and will soon unsubscribe if not. If so I miss nothing. Same reason people prefer purchases of things they know they want to be delivered to them. THAT’S “modern times” to me! You only drive to the store if there’s a reason to.
