probably no need to convince many people here, but I think Cory Doctorow made a good observation for those not in the loop just yet, basically making a sales pitch for the RSS in 2024, which imo is quite sound.
[…] I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly’s excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.
This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.
It’s RSS.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise
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It’s really great. The article mentioned substack, but every youtube channel also has an RSS feed. The feed URL for each channel is like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<put channel ID here>. The ID for a given channel can be found using this tool https://www.streamweasels.com/tools/youtube-channel-id-and-user-id-convertor/ .
Now instead of opening youtube.com/subscriptions I can just flick through my RSS reader’s youtube folder. It means I don’t need an account to follow along with a channel, and I can still keep track of what I’ve watched/saved for later, except now the data is on MY machine.
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Spot on
Can anyone recommend an RSS reader? I used to use Thunderbird, but it felt clunky. I just want something no-frills and standalone.
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I didn’t realize substack had RSS, thanks for highlighting that part! I was able to finally unsubscribe from my last one (People’s CDC) and add it to my reader instead.
Some folks talk about their RSS readers in this thread: What RSS Readers do you use?! 
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