This is a honest question. I have two RSS services hosted on my server, and I don’t see the point. RSS is by nature distributed, and subscribing to my own server just makes the source of all news being the same. What is the advantage? What do people use it for?
Some jerk company (like Google) cannot suddenly discontinue my entire reader with all my feeds, because its mine, on my server. But because it’s a web app, I can use it from any device, unlike a local app. After Google killed reader, That was just too annoying. Self hosted since.
A self-hostes RSS reader? Probably the ability to read your stuff from anywhere without installing something. Like on your work PC… ;)
For me, it makes the clients disposable. I can reinstall the laptop, desktop, phone and be up and running in no time, without doing backups and preparation. Also it is easy to jump between clients.
The server needs to be backed up though
Sync between devices. I only read RSS on one device so I don’t need it either. Besides if you don’t think a service is useful to you why do you host it?
After years of using Feeder on my phone and some other random stuff on my laptop, I switched to FreshRSS on my server and the big thing is everything stays synced. My read and stared articles are all where they should be. I run fluent reader on all my devices and tailscale keeps me always connected to my reader so I can save articles on my phone when I don’t have time to read them then read them when I get home on my laptop or tablet.
