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 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.
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.
I just discovered that youtube also creates an RSS feed for each individual playlist! https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<ID_FROM_PLAYLIST_URL>
This is great information! I had recently tried using an alternate front-end for reddit because I read they had added RSS support, and added the feed for one of the small groups I follow there. I liked seeing them in my feed reader, but since I couldn’t reply from the front-end, it was many clicks if I wanted to get to the original link to comment.
The RSS in Reddit is not very discoverable. Also, I love that old reddit settings view and didn’t know “old reddit” was still partly accessible.
I built and operate my own RSS app because I wanted something web-based that focused on the reading experience as well as discovery. It’s free (ideas for how to monetize welcome!) because it costs very little to run every month. Would love your thoughts!
I thought Reddit went through a big scandal when they shut down API access and broke third-party apps? RSS seems like a massive loophole around that though?
I don’t know if my RSS program actually counts as a reader per se… it shows how many unread items there are in each feed, lets me group them into folders, and when I click on an item it opens the source page in my web browser. The RSS program itself doesn’t render the article/post/entry contents even if it’s all in the feed.
But it’s still RSS, and it’s still separate from any social media algorithm.
there are many rss feed readers to choose from. i use the browser extension feedbro. also, there is this terminal rss feed reader called newsboat that was pretty neat.
