Reading RSS content is a skilled activity(doliver.org)
doliver.org
Reading RSS content is a skilled activity
https://www.doliver.org/articles/rss-as-a-skill
87 comments
RSS came of age in a very different time, when the world of computing was more, for lack of a better term, workstation-centric. People wanted RSS clients that were similar to email clients, or maybe even integrated directly into the email client, and they had this idea that they should 'catch up' on everything that was published since their last session, almost like it was a job.
Nowadays people have an implicit understanding that the net is vast and infinite, it's beyond the ability of one man to fully catch up, and you're just tuning into a slice of the data stream.
RSS clients never really departed from their roots of showing reverse chronological lists of all the posts, but this UI loses usefulness when the data stream gets too big. Commercial social media saw an opportunity and decided to make the algorithm that arranges the feed totally opaque - with that achieved, they proceeded to auction off each spot in it and get rich. Even worse than the reverse chronological firehose.
What we lack is a presentation that is actually good! I don't have the answer. One thing I want to experiment with, though, is digests. I use a straight reverse chronological UI that aggregates all my items in all my feeds. One thing I noticed is that this ends up wildly biased toward feeds that have lots of posts, like news aggregator websites, or Reddit. Anyone who's foolish enough to work hard and produce wonderful long form content with less frequency, gets lost in the firehose, which may tell us a lot about how the collapse-in-progress of our civilization got started. I have no idea how to solve this and do better than the UIs and algorithms that rule the world today. I do have it on my todo list to try a digest style UI - like perhaps each website gets one entry per day in my feed, and if they made multiple posts on that day, those are represented as multiple small title links in a compact format. Whereas a less frequent poster might even get an excerpt along with their title or something.
Nowadays people have an implicit understanding that the net is vast and infinite, it's beyond the ability of one man to fully catch up, and you're just tuning into a slice of the data stream.
RSS clients never really departed from their roots of showing reverse chronological lists of all the posts, but this UI loses usefulness when the data stream gets too big. Commercial social media saw an opportunity and decided to make the algorithm that arranges the feed totally opaque - with that achieved, they proceeded to auction off each spot in it and get rich. Even worse than the reverse chronological firehose.
What we lack is a presentation that is actually good! I don't have the answer. One thing I want to experiment with, though, is digests. I use a straight reverse chronological UI that aggregates all my items in all my feeds. One thing I noticed is that this ends up wildly biased toward feeds that have lots of posts, like news aggregator websites, or Reddit. Anyone who's foolish enough to work hard and produce wonderful long form content with less frequency, gets lost in the firehose, which may tell us a lot about how the collapse-in-progress of our civilization got started. I have no idea how to solve this and do better than the UIs and algorithms that rule the world today. I do have it on my todo list to try a digest style UI - like perhaps each website gets one entry per day in my feed, and if they made multiple posts on that day, those are represented as multiple small title links in a compact format. Whereas a less frequent poster might even get an excerpt along with their title or something.
> "Nowadays people have an implicit understanding that the net is vast and infinite, it's beyond the ability of one man to fully catch up, and you're just tuning into a slice of the data stream".
This is beautifully written, and condense enough to explain to anyone why we're burnt out with consumption.
Your full comment is spot on, and like you, I don’t have a perfect solution. Digests are a good idea, but there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human. I think the real challenge is to create a digest that gives you a personal, meaningful view while still leaving the door open to a wider context. But if you lean too far into broadening it, you risk losing that sense of ownership and relevance. It’s a tough balance.
This is beautifully written, and condense enough to explain to anyone why we're burnt out with consumption.
Your full comment is spot on, and like you, I don’t have a perfect solution. Digests are a good idea, but there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human. I think the real challenge is to create a digest that gives you a personal, meaningful view while still leaving the door open to a wider context. But if you lean too far into broadening it, you risk losing that sense of ownership and relevance. It’s a tough balance.
Thank you,
> there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human
This is spot on, and why I become more of a free software radical every year. Even though these UX experiments roll around in my head, I doubt you can make any algorithm that is "unbiased" and perfect for all people.
Ergo the only real solution is to let a thousand algorithms bloom, and give people the ability to select the ones they want; this is getting back to the idea of the software being a "user agent" that fetches content for you and does what you want it to do, as opposed to being an advertiser's agent. Maybe there's some alternate reality out there where everything was AGPL'ed from the get-go and Facebook et al got forked a thousand times and had to compete with forks that were more user friendly. Or barring that maybe the problem gets solved in 100 years with a dozen Mastodon forks blooming, I don't know, but I'm sure if you could choose your algorithm, it would look nothing like the Instagram app in particular does today, which is my personal choice for the most mind-destroying software I find myself sometimes using
Or maybe if the government succeeds in breaking the monopolies that rule over both social media and the online advertising industry...?
> there’s always going to be some kind of bias, whether it’s set by you, by an algorithm, or by another human
This is spot on, and why I become more of a free software radical every year. Even though these UX experiments roll around in my head, I doubt you can make any algorithm that is "unbiased" and perfect for all people.
Ergo the only real solution is to let a thousand algorithms bloom, and give people the ability to select the ones they want; this is getting back to the idea of the software being a "user agent" that fetches content for you and does what you want it to do, as opposed to being an advertiser's agent. Maybe there's some alternate reality out there where everything was AGPL'ed from the get-go and Facebook et al got forked a thousand times and had to compete with forks that were more user friendly. Or barring that maybe the problem gets solved in 100 years with a dozen Mastodon forks blooming, I don't know, but I'm sure if you could choose your algorithm, it would look nothing like the Instagram app in particular does today, which is my personal choice for the most mind-destroying software I find myself sometimes using
Or maybe if the government succeeds in breaking the monopolies that rule over both social media and the online advertising industry...?
> firehose
This is what the modern information space feels like in one word. It's impossible to read everything. But at the same time, it's not necessary to read everything.
> What we lack is a presentation that is actually good! I don't have the answer. One thing I want to experiment with, though, is digests.
Do you have a RSS feed that I can subscribe to so that I get notified when you publish your experiment?
This is what the modern information space feels like in one word. It's impossible to read everything. But at the same time, it's not necessary to read everything.
> What we lack is a presentation that is actually good! I don't have the answer. One thing I want to experiment with, though, is digests.
Do you have a RSS feed that I can subscribe to so that I get notified when you publish your experiment?
I've never actually published any of the code I use to view my RSS feeds. This question comes up from time to time when I discuss the subject though! Maybe I will one of these days.
Other people do, though (not mine): https://github.com/facundoolano/feedi
I'm not using that one yet, but I very much like their idea to highlight infrequent sources. If I hand-added the feeds, I feel they should by default have at least an equal chance of me noticing a post in them, without clicking through all the feeds.
I also like the idea of subscribing to everything and then privately filtering the for special-interest keywords. I'm not doing that currently, but I subscribe via RSS to some searches or tags. E.g. here via hnapp.com, or on StackOverflow you can subscribe to tags, or the RSS feed of low-traffic subreddits.
I'm not using that one yet, but I very much like their idea to highlight infrequent sources. If I hand-added the feeds, I feel they should by default have at least an equal chance of me noticing a post in them, without clicking through all the feeds.
I also like the idea of subscribing to everything and then privately filtering the for special-interest keywords. I'm not doing that currently, but I subscribe via RSS to some searches or tags. E.g. here via hnapp.com, or on StackOverflow you can subscribe to tags, or the RSS feed of low-traffic subreddits.
In my opinion the answer is curation. If you're getting so many magazines and newspapers in the post that you can't read them all, the answer isn't to hire someone to cut out random pages for you to read (oh, why are they all adverts?), the answer is to stop subscribing to so many publications.
I never fail to read all of my social media feeds and email messages, because I actively cancel subscriptions to stuff that I don't have time to read. After all, it's entertainment/casual education, not mandatory learning.
I never fail to read all of my social media feeds and email messages, because I actively cancel subscriptions to stuff that I don't have time to read. After all, it's entertainment/casual education, not mandatory learning.
Hire someone? What about just using a system that crowd-sources it. That's what "Thumbs Up" icons can do, if you can get people to use them.
Popularity contests don't do a great job of surfacing quality. They do OK at pruning away the dullest 25℅, but tend to also throw away the top 5‰ most interesting stuff, because that stuff is invariably niche. They also don't do great in the meh middle, favoring loudness and approachability over thoughtfulness and competence.
It's just like when people say Twitter/X is a Cesspool. Of course it is if you view the unfiltererd/agorithmic feed. However, if you only view the content from who you're following you get exactly the content you want.
I use Twitter/X and all I ever see is AI/LLM stuff because it's all I follow and all I use it for. Zero politics. If someone does a political post, that's an instant unfollow.
This is how we can rank RSS as well. You can look at a rank-ordered list only from people you trust, or a rank-ordered list from the public at large, which will be a dumpster fire. So you can take a union of all content from those you follow and put the ones with most upvotes at top, and viola, you're done.
EDIT: However a better approach is do use AI to categorize as, politics/non-politics, hotdog/non-hotdog, etc, and then I can turn off political posts without having to completely unfollow someone I'd otherwise like.
I use Twitter/X and all I ever see is AI/LLM stuff because it's all I follow and all I use it for. Zero politics. If someone does a political post, that's an instant unfollow.
This is how we can rank RSS as well. You can look at a rank-ordered list only from people you trust, or a rank-ordered list from the public at large, which will be a dumpster fire. So you can take a union of all content from those you follow and put the ones with most upvotes at top, and viola, you're done.
EDIT: However a better approach is do use AI to categorize as, politics/non-politics, hotdog/non-hotdog, etc, and then I can turn off political posts without having to completely unfollow someone I'd otherwise like.
Most people never read most of the magazines and newspapers they got cover to cover. I certainly read a fairly small percentage of the New York Times.
I did something like this with my reader:
- Only subscribed to lots of niche news and small websites (most of my list has the category 'dev blog' attached to it, so that's all of you guys/girls with a blog).
- Only get posts when I click, basically no automatic hoarding in the background (except for my Newspaper functionality, which does a little bit of background request for important feeds that I manually selected).
- Just pick the last post from a randomly selected feed. This really gets me going from reading about Linux, to reading about the best way to bake a cake, to reading about interior design, to reading about bikepacking... all in one sit.
- Or only pick from randomly selected feeds with a certain category, when I'm in the mood for a specific kind of news. For example, I want to know new videos on selected Youtube channels, or i only want to see posts with a picture attached (I call it 'photo feeds').
- Only subscribed to lots of niche news and small websites (most of my list has the category 'dev blog' attached to it, so that's all of you guys/girls with a blog).
- Only get posts when I click, basically no automatic hoarding in the background (except for my Newspaper functionality, which does a little bit of background request for important feeds that I manually selected).
- Just pick the last post from a randomly selected feed. This really gets me going from reading about Linux, to reading about the best way to bake a cake, to reading about interior design, to reading about bikepacking... all in one sit.
- Or only pick from randomly selected feeds with a certain category, when I'm in the mood for a specific kind of news. For example, I want to know new videos on selected Youtube channels, or i only want to see posts with a picture attached (I call it 'photo feeds').
Good stuff getting "lost in the firehose" is a big concern. If there were a 'not easily game-able' way to have people upvote great content in a way that votes could be tallied that would help, but I'd much prefer, dare I say it...a "decentralized" protocol for that if possible. Maybe Nostr based where stuff is crypto signed with your key, and you choose who to trust maybe even. Not sure how much of this "follow.it" is doing, if any of it, because I haven't dug into it yet, but I'm optimistic we can revive RSS in a big way. It's too good of an idea to let BigTech and BigMedia kill it off simply by ignoring it. Big companies and AD agencies of course hate RSS because it puts users in charge if what they read rather than having to wade thru tons of AD views to get to content.
Someone I know once described Twitter as being a river that you dipped into when you had the time and the interest. I think RSS was similar but, as you say, the clients had a somewhat different model. You could get around by having a priority category or something like that.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/TwitterBreakin...
> I need to treat it as a stream that I dip my toe into every so often
> I need to treat it as a stream that I dip my toe into every so often
> RSS clients never really departed from their roots of showing reverse chronological lists of all the posts
Actually, that’s the nature of the feed and the whole point here IMO
Actually, that’s the nature of the feed and the whole point here IMO
There are a couple readers that avoid that by providing a calmer experience without a firehose and without background fetching.
https://blogcat.org (I made this one)
https://fraidyc.at (this is the inspiration for many calm readers)
https://cblgh.itch.io/rad-reader (multiplatform and super calm)
https://blogcat.org (I made this one)
https://fraidyc.at (this is the inspiration for many calm readers)
https://cblgh.itch.io/rad-reader (multiplatform and super calm)
Ended up abandoning Fraidycat after it atrophied (a number of the integrations that weren't plain RSS, like YouTube/Twitch, didn't work well, it ended up choking my browser, and then stopped working entirely)... did not know there were so many spiritual successors. Thanks!
Now... if anyone knows of an iOS equivalent, that'd be awesome.
Now... if anyone knows of an iOS equivalent, that'd be awesome.
One of the big issue I had (and have) with RSS is that is discouraged me from following multiple similar sources, as I’ll see similar stories in each feed and it becomes very noisy.
Some apps I saw in the past, like Fever that attempted to quell this issue, but I ended to taking the approach of just being ruthless about what I subscribe to.
The ultimate result of this was just a few feeds, but one of them is ars technica, which on its own can become too much if I don’t keep up on it daily, and if they miss covering something, I miss reading about it. It doesn’t leave room for special interest blogs in tech, without inevitably creating more duplication than I’d like.
I don’t think the modern algorithmic approach is much better, as things can just as easily fall through the cracks.
I need to seriously consider adopting your “read it now or read it never” approach. This is effectively how my read-it-later accounts work in practice, but with the good intentions of reading something later, comes the shame of never actually doing it. Compound that with the regret I feel when I occasionally open it up and find dead links. I don’t think any of this shame or regret actually makes my life better.
Some apps I saw in the past, like Fever that attempted to quell this issue, but I ended to taking the approach of just being ruthless about what I subscribe to.
The ultimate result of this was just a few feeds, but one of them is ars technica, which on its own can become too much if I don’t keep up on it daily, and if they miss covering something, I miss reading about it. It doesn’t leave room for special interest blogs in tech, without inevitably creating more duplication than I’d like.
I don’t think the modern algorithmic approach is much better, as things can just as easily fall through the cracks.
I need to seriously consider adopting your “read it now or read it never” approach. This is effectively how my read-it-later accounts work in practice, but with the good intentions of reading something later, comes the shame of never actually doing it. Compound that with the regret I feel when I occasionally open it up and find dead links. I don’t think any of this shame or regret actually makes my life better.
It depends what you use it for. I’m a researcher and use it to follow scientific literature (relevant arXiv sections and scientific journals, as well as funding agency announcements), and keeping an eye on what’s up is then arguably part of the job.
If you use it for general news and blogs, that’s of course different. I completely agree with letting the FOMO go.
If you use it for general news and blogs, that’s of course different. I completely agree with letting the FOMO go.
It takes effort indeed. Just as putting up a little homepage, writing articles, essays or short tidbits, and publishing an RSS feed for that.
What I do with my self-built reader (link in bio) to have it not function as a newsfeed from regular social media, is to only get the latest posts from randomly selected feeds. I don't need all of the unread posts from all of the sources (there are 1415 now in my list) every time. This is also nicer for the publishers (that may be you, fellow HNer!), since every request to your feed is actually read.
In the beginning of using my own reader I was really craving the dopamine shot from regular social media, it literally took me two years to get used to my self-inflicted info diet. Now it's really a calm blessing, especially because I read stuff posted by yet another internet fellow who has a blog. Way more human.
Using RSS is different and should be different. Wanting RSS and the social open web, and then transforming it to regular social media with notifications and a firehose of news is the same as building a new barebones electric pickup truck and then wanting it to connect to an app.
What I do with my self-built reader (link in bio) to have it not function as a newsfeed from regular social media, is to only get the latest posts from randomly selected feeds. I don't need all of the unread posts from all of the sources (there are 1415 now in my list) every time. This is also nicer for the publishers (that may be you, fellow HNer!), since every request to your feed is actually read.
In the beginning of using my own reader I was really craving the dopamine shot from regular social media, it literally took me two years to get used to my self-inflicted info diet. Now it's really a calm blessing, especially because I read stuff posted by yet another internet fellow who has a blog. Way more human.
Using RSS is different and should be different. Wanting RSS and the social open web, and then transforming it to regular social media with notifications and a firehose of news is the same as building a new barebones electric pickup truck and then wanting it to connect to an app.
I don't think this is just about RSS:
> So, how do we decide and filter for ourselves? My favored approach is fairly old fashioned: Chains of trust. We start by finding someone whose judgement we trust and subscribing to their feed, and then we find out who they trust and subscribe to their feed, and so on. Part of the judgement that we're looking for in these trustees is not simply whether or not content is accurate but whether or not it is worth our attention.
This goes for any form of social media beyond just blogs. Find people who have good taste, good judgement and demonstrate their credibility in the subjects that matter to you. Collect those people - follow them on social media, hang out with them on Discord, attend events that they go to, subscribe to their blogs and their newsletters, read their papers (for academia), pay attention to the people THEY respect.
Repeat that a bunch of times and you can become incredibly well informed on almost any topic.
> So, how do we decide and filter for ourselves? My favored approach is fairly old fashioned: Chains of trust. We start by finding someone whose judgement we trust and subscribing to their feed, and then we find out who they trust and subscribe to their feed, and so on. Part of the judgement that we're looking for in these trustees is not simply whether or not content is accurate but whether or not it is worth our attention.
This goes for any form of social media beyond just blogs. Find people who have good taste, good judgement and demonstrate their credibility in the subjects that matter to you. Collect those people - follow them on social media, hang out with them on Discord, attend events that they go to, subscribe to their blogs and their newsletters, read their papers (for academia), pay attention to the people THEY respect.
Repeat that a bunch of times and you can become incredibly well informed on almost any topic.
"Filtering" is the imprortant part here and it is more then just finding good sources, because you still dont control the content and the more sources you get, the larger SNR becomes.
I've a gigantic list of RSS sources and at the top of that list are some must-read outlets ... and filters that only show new entries, when some keywords match. Without that, my feedreader would be borderline unusable too.
I've a gigantic list of RSS sources and at the top of that list are some must-read outlets ... and filters that only show new entries, when some keywords match. Without that, my feedreader would be borderline unusable too.
You don't have to read everything you're subscribed to. I'll wake up and have, say, 150 or so unread items in my feed reader, and I'll just take 5 minutes or so hitting the next button and marking them as read, and if there's something I care to actually read I'll mark it unread and move on. Then once I've actually found everything I want to read I'll go back and actually read those. A Eurogamer article on a game I don't care about? Skipped. A Eurogamer article about an interview with the devs of a game I love? Mark unread and come back to it after filtering.
The benefit of RSS is that it presents everything as a purely chronological feed. An algorithmic feed tries to figure out what you want and present it to you; a chronological feed you have to do that filtering yourself. RSS isn't a way of getting around that, it's a way of doing it better
The benefit of RSS is that it presents everything as a purely chronological feed. An algorithmic feed tries to figure out what you want and present it to you; a chronological feed you have to do that filtering yourself. RSS isn't a way of getting around that, it's a way of doing it better
I'm shocked hearing there are people who try to read everything in their RSS queue. That's madness. I get 300-600 in any given day.
What it does though is give me a range of headlines from news sources I've chosen to follow, that I can skim through, and read maybe 10-30 of on a given day (for some definition of "read" anyway...engage with would be more accurate). Heck, it's how I got here in the first place.
What it does though is give me a range of headlines from news sources I've chosen to follow, that I can skim through, and read maybe 10-30 of on a given day (for some definition of "read" anyway...engage with would be more accurate). Heck, it's how I got here in the first place.
Yeah, that’s what I find. In fact I’m only on this article catching up with my RSS.
I skim through, I arrange feeds in folders alphabetically sorted by both priority and subject. I constantly remove feeds I find too noisy, and I sort chronologically (ascending). I update read status in bulk based on my scroll position (mark above as read). It works really well, though took about a year to figure out what works best for me.
I skim through, I arrange feeds in folders alphabetically sorted by both priority and subject. I constantly remove feeds I find too noisy, and I sort chronologically (ascending). I update read status in bulk based on my scroll position (mark above as read). It works really well, though took about a year to figure out what works best for me.
I adore RSS. Some gems I've found:
https://hnrss.org/
https://rsshub.app/twitter/user/{username} for twitter accounts
Append .rss to any subreddit URL you want updates on
YouTube also has an RSS feed for channels
https://hnrss.org/
https://rsshub.app/twitter/user/{username} for twitter accounts
Append .rss to any subreddit URL you want updates on
YouTube also has an RSS feed for channels
Feeder
https://github.com/spacecowboy/Feeder?tab=readme-ov-file
Free, excellent
https://github.com/spacecowboy/Feeder?tab=readme-ov-file
Free, excellent
came here to mention Feeder :) it's very good.
it was a bit painful without search, but they finally merged the long-hanging merge request, and now the search across posts is available in the stable version!
totally recommend!
also, a bit aside, but for podcasts: antennapod seems to be doing a good job too!
it was a bit painful without search, but they finally merged the long-hanging merge request, and now the search across posts is available in the stable version!
totally recommend!
also, a bit aside, but for podcasts: antennapod seems to be doing a good job too!
>rsshub
This has been one of the key programs for me to move 90% of my "timeline" into an rss reader.
If you self-host it, you can also pass it authentication tokens to RSSify things like:
- your twitter timeline
- github notifications, issues, commits
- discord messages
- youtube subscriptions
- spotify/twitch/steam/etc.
This has been one of the key programs for me to move 90% of my "timeline" into an rss reader.
If you self-host it, you can also pass it authentication tokens to RSSify things like:
- your twitter timeline
- github notifications, issues, commits
- discord messages
- youtube subscriptions
- spotify/twitch/steam/etc.
An to add another project in a similar vein (scraping to turn pages into RSS): https://rss-bridge.org/
There is a misunderstanding about RSS and escaping algorithms. Sure, you are not under the social media control but you certainly are under the publisher control. Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news. It becomes overwhelming and if you want inbox zero it’s another digital burden. The result is that I pretty much lost interest on following some websites through RSS because even though I do like some of the articles, it’s another way of doomscrolling when searching for the one thing that will give you the dopamine hit.
So after excluding the vast majority of websites, I was left with 10-20 websites that I did enjoy ~60% of the content they put out and I've subscribed to their newsletter. Which in most cases is full of tracking links but that’s a case for another topic.
So after excluding the vast majority of websites, I was left with 10-20 websites that I did enjoy ~60% of the content they put out and I've subscribed to their newsletter. Which in most cases is full of tracking links but that’s a case for another topic.
> Now you have to see everything that they publish. Which makes it the absolutely worst way to consume news.
I agree on the second part, but the first part is not necessary. RSS is technically not hard, one can write one's own reader very quickly. You don't have to consume everything a publishers publishes, I don't even see everything a publisher publishes because I don't even request everything a publisher publishes.
I think the (your? my?) curation should focus on selecting some good sources (like the article says), but this means in no way that you should see everything all the time. Only when you want, in a quantity that's doable for you.
I agree on the second part, but the first part is not necessary. RSS is technically not hard, one can write one's own reader very quickly. You don't have to consume everything a publishers publishes, I don't even see everything a publisher publishes because I don't even request everything a publisher publishes.
I think the (your? my?) curation should focus on selecting some good sources (like the article says), but this means in no way that you should see everything all the time. Only when you want, in a quantity that's doable for you.
I can and do filter on certain feeds. My reader (tiny tiny rss) supports filtering based on the contents of the articles.
I filter sponsored articles or ones that need a subscription, articles that are a series, links to podcasts, recurring series..
I filter sponsored articles or ones that need a subscription, articles that are a series, links to podcasts, recurring series..
Fetching the feed less often can help but you still have to treat high volume feeds differently. With my best discipline, I was opening my reader just once a day and getting just whatever happens to be “front page” at the moment. The few YT channels I “follow” via RSS only post content a few times a month.
You just need a reader that aggregates all your feeds into a single chronological list. Sure this means that you may never get thru the firehose, but it's easier to me than going to each subscription to read it individually. It's less work, and more fun as one big list.
>and if you want inbox zero
There's your problem. Turn off the "unread" indicators and just chill. You're not going to read everything and that's okay.
There's your problem. Turn off the "unread" indicators and just chill. You're not going to read everything and that's okay.
> Now you have to see everything that they publish.
Ha, that's almost word-for-word on https://zacusca.net. [0]
And Zacusca represents a third way (the first two being reverse chron and newsletters, which both put control in the publisher's hands). If you can articulate what you enjoy then you can filter the RSS according to that.
[0] I'm working on Zacusca. Other, frankly more developed, alternatives include: - https://feeds.fun/ - https://scour.ing/about
Ha, that's almost word-for-word on https://zacusca.net. [0]
And Zacusca represents a third way (the first two being reverse chron and newsletters, which both put control in the publisher's hands). If you can articulate what you enjoy then you can filter the RSS according to that.
[0] I'm working on Zacusca. Other, frankly more developed, alternatives include: - https://feeds.fun/ - https://scour.ing/about
This is perfectly reasonable, but I think it is a bit general. The notion of a chain of trust leading to a curated feed can equally apply to YouTube if you stick to the subscribed channels view.
There are also specific skills I've picked up from being subscribed to the Hacker News "top" RSS feed. Namely judicious use of the "mark all as read" button.
There are also specific skills I've picked up from being subscribed to the Hacker News "top" RSS feed. Namely judicious use of the "mark all as read" button.
Definitely the `Chain of Trust` concept can be applied to anything. For example Social Media Protocol developers have thought a lot about using CoTrust, to be able to block undesirable people (moderation), by following a 'whitelist' only of users you trust or ones they trust, down a dependency tree of trust. Interestingly you could decentralize this onto some Relay system like Nostr and use Crypto signing, where each "trust" is Crypto certified to be correct, rather than needing to truse a central server/authority.
Nostr isn't decentralized because you need to choose relays.
The word has different meanings in different contexts. In Social Media context calling Nostr decentralized is in every way accurate. But this will be my only post with you debating the definition of words. Hope you enjoyed it.
The fact that you can choose relays and even run your own is very much why nostr is decentralized...
agreed. don't be afraid to use the mark all as read button!
I use RSS since ages. I would categorize the usefulness in two dimensions:
A) News feed consumption in a more structured way, avoiding shifting placements of articles on websites, layout nightmares, ....
B) Follow blogs and other once in a while publications.
At least for A) I hope to get / find some AI support that helps to consume the "firehose". I have subscribed to multiple news outlets that typically have significant overlap in their coverage.
I'm thinking about:
- Duplicate removal from the RSS feed. Same article (slightly modified) published multiple times or intentionally republished at a different time (typical on e.g Business Insider).
- Aggregate (list together) all articles to a certain topic, that are more or less similar, so getting away from sorting (only) by feed to more by topic. I realized a while back, that it's easier for me to consume "similar" stuff than constantly switching dimensions. For me I have my feed groups sep. by language. It was too hard to have articles in a wild language mix order.
- Better distinguish between "Hot topic" vs. "Isolated, but valuable pieces".
- Self defined "Summary function" for articles I'm currently reading to get to the core of the news.
A) News feed consumption in a more structured way, avoiding shifting placements of articles on websites, layout nightmares, ....
B) Follow blogs and other once in a while publications.
At least for A) I hope to get / find some AI support that helps to consume the "firehose". I have subscribed to multiple news outlets that typically have significant overlap in their coverage.
I'm thinking about:
- Duplicate removal from the RSS feed. Same article (slightly modified) published multiple times or intentionally republished at a different time (typical on e.g Business Insider).
- Aggregate (list together) all articles to a certain topic, that are more or less similar, so getting away from sorting (only) by feed to more by topic. I realized a while back, that it's easier for me to consume "similar" stuff than constantly switching dimensions. For me I have my feed groups sep. by language. It was too hard to have articles in a wild language mix order.
- Better distinguish between "Hot topic" vs. "Isolated, but valuable pieces".
- Self defined "Summary function" for articles I'm currently reading to get to the core of the news.
Seeing many posts here talking about how their feed reading experience is overwhelming cause it is a firehose of things they might not be interested in. So I wrote a little post about alternative experiences in RSS reading:
https://andregarzia.com/2025/04/rss-doesnt-necessarily-means...
You can have feed readers that provide a calmer UX. My own feed reader, BlogCat, lets you configure how many posts per website you want to see in the reader page and how often to fetch each site (with the default being daily). Without notifications or background fetching, you're in control of how often and when you want to see the posts from a website.
https://andregarzia.com/2025/04/rss-doesnt-necessarily-means...
You can have feed readers that provide a calmer UX. My own feed reader, BlogCat, lets you configure how many posts per website you want to see in the reader page and how often to fetch each site (with the default being daily). Without notifications or background fetching, you're in control of how often and when you want to see the posts from a website.
My problem with RSS is that I tend to subscribe to too many things and then it's too much. Also I wanted a solution that was free or self hosted, but I realized it's much better if someone manages the complexity for me, so I just ended up going with the paid hosting for miniflux (https://miniflux.app/).
Now I've just subscribed to a few things I care about, I open the website from time to time, quickly mark as "read" stuff I'm not interested in, and when I have more time I just go through everything that is still unread, because it's been "filtered in". Seems to work!
Now I've just subscribed to a few things I care about, I open the website from time to time, quickly mark as "read" stuff I'm not interested in, and when I have more time I just go through everything that is still unread, because it's been "filtered in". Seems to work!
A good RSS reader/feed is nice to curb over consumption. I use it for youtube channels and blogs. As long as I can consume the content via my reader, I don't need to visit youtube and fall down any rabbit holes.
I attempted this a while ago. I loaded all my YouTube subscriptions into an RSS reader, and then it quickly became too much for me to deal with. The big problem was that I do 99.5% of my YouTube viewing on a TV, while my RSS readers is on the phone and desktop. I learned that whatever solutions come up with needs to fit into my life. I’m not going to become a desk chair YouTube watcher.
YouTube effectively already has this built-in with their subscriptions. Not being able to turn off the recommended page, or default to loaded the subscriptions when opening the app on the TV are the real issues.
YouTube effectively already has this built-in with their subscriptions. Not being able to turn off the recommended page, or default to loaded the subscriptions when opening the app on the TV are the real issues.
I understand it's not for everyone, but it works for me. I don't watch youtube anywhere else other than my laptop. I can't imagine trying to use a TV app.. but that's a whole other can of worms :)
> We start by finding someone whose judgement we trust and subscribing to their feed, and then we find out who they trust and subscribe to their feed, and so on.
I do this, but then to avoid echo chambers I do occasional fault injection where I pick someone that one of my feed is at an opposite pole to in some salient, on some axis, and inject them to my feed for a while. Maybe I have something to learn from them, maybe I don’t, maybe they stay on the feed or maybe they are removed. I hope this helps me avoid groupthink.
I do this, but then to avoid echo chambers I do occasional fault injection where I pick someone that one of my feed is at an opposite pole to in some salient, on some axis, and inject them to my feed for a while. Maybe I have something to learn from them, maybe I don’t, maybe they stay on the feed or maybe they are removed. I hope this helps me avoid groupthink.
I do the same. Case in point: I started to follow someone's blog because of their technical achievements, then I realized I don't like their political views _at all_, but I keep them on the list mostly to keep myself on my toes.
The way I have addressed this is using my own tool [1] which creates daily digests instead (MD files with date). This removes the stress to check everything or having hundreds of unread, I care only about the current day. If I get some time, say on the weekend, I could go in previous days and check if I skipped. I think its a better trade off than having so many unread stories that grow over time.
[1] https://github.com/piqoni/matcha
[1] https://github.com/piqoni/matcha
I keep coming back to the idea of curating my own reading through RSS.
I missed the first wave: mostly stuck to aggregators and blogs, but eventually set up a Feedly account. Like others here, I found maintaining a meaningful list takes real energy. It's easy to over-subscribe and end up with a second inbox.
Still, I think the effort is worth it. The best systems I've worked on always rewarded small, regular maintenance over trying to automate everything away. Feels like curating information works the same way.
I missed the first wave: mostly stuck to aggregators and blogs, but eventually set up a Feedly account. Like others here, I found maintaining a meaningful list takes real energy. It's easy to over-subscribe and end up with a second inbox.
Still, I think the effort is worth it. The best systems I've worked on always rewarded small, regular maintenance over trying to automate everything away. Feels like curating information works the same way.
I think self curation is a theme not directly discussed.
The recurring problem is other people trying to tell you what information you should see, resulting in suboptimal aggregations. If you don't curate your own stuff, you'll slide into whatever state of mind your curator wants you to slide into.
Algorithmic feeds are widely accepted to cause doomscrolling, and my experience with RSS is similar to the author: it goes well, but then whenever an aggregate source of any kind is added, it drowns out everything else. This wouldn't be a problem if everything from the source was a good read. The issue is any aggregation by someone who isn't you isn't going to be perfect for you.
My brain wants to make a link between collateralised debt obligations causing the recession, and aggregate info sources and algo feeds causing the collapse of the modern internet. Basically, everyone realises 90% of what they have in their feed/inbox is actually worthless and we only have it because the people who we get stuff from mixed it with a few good/relevant pieces of information so we trusted/assumed the rest would be good/relevant.
Life takes effort, if you outsource the effort, your life requires less effort but is less likely to be what you want. The same applies to curating the content you consume. It's easy to accidentally outsource.
The recurring problem is other people trying to tell you what information you should see, resulting in suboptimal aggregations. If you don't curate your own stuff, you'll slide into whatever state of mind your curator wants you to slide into.
Algorithmic feeds are widely accepted to cause doomscrolling, and my experience with RSS is similar to the author: it goes well, but then whenever an aggregate source of any kind is added, it drowns out everything else. This wouldn't be a problem if everything from the source was a good read. The issue is any aggregation by someone who isn't you isn't going to be perfect for you.
My brain wants to make a link between collateralised debt obligations causing the recession, and aggregate info sources and algo feeds causing the collapse of the modern internet. Basically, everyone realises 90% of what they have in their feed/inbox is actually worthless and we only have it because the people who we get stuff from mixed it with a few good/relevant pieces of information so we trusted/assumed the rest would be good/relevant.
Life takes effort, if you outsource the effort, your life requires less effort but is less likely to be what you want. The same applies to curating the content you consume. It's easy to accidentally outsource.
People here seem to fall into two camps:
(A) Studiously prune your feeds like a bonsai. As the author suggest, follow the chain of trust to a small number of voices (for me, something like Stratechery, Simon Willison, Inner Ring).
(B) Realise that RSS is another form of 'tyranny', this time at the hands of the publisher instead of the platform, where the composition of your feeds, and therefore what uses your attention, doesn't correlate highly with what matters to you.
I can feel the pickaxes being unsheathed as I type this but...I have reason to believe my (and others') LLM/embeddings-driven products are a good solution.
Position (A) isn't tenable if FOMO matters. Paraphrasing another comment here: 'Following arXiv is part of the job'.
So let's say you adopt position (B). You recognise that everything that matters to you is distributed across some set of feeds. But only a small proportion of the total material in those feeds matters to you. If you can articulate what matters then you can let an LLM or embeddings model use their attention, instead of yours, on the low-relevance items by filtering them out.
Some options:
- https;//scour.ing
- https://feeds.fun
- https://zacusca.net (disclosure: mine, and still pretty janky)
(A) Studiously prune your feeds like a bonsai. As the author suggest, follow the chain of trust to a small number of voices (for me, something like Stratechery, Simon Willison, Inner Ring).
(B) Realise that RSS is another form of 'tyranny', this time at the hands of the publisher instead of the platform, where the composition of your feeds, and therefore what uses your attention, doesn't correlate highly with what matters to you.
I can feel the pickaxes being unsheathed as I type this but...I have reason to believe my (and others') LLM/embeddings-driven products are a good solution.
Position (A) isn't tenable if FOMO matters. Paraphrasing another comment here: 'Following arXiv is part of the job'.
So let's say you adopt position (B). You recognise that everything that matters to you is distributed across some set of feeds. But only a small proportion of the total material in those feeds matters to you. If you can articulate what matters then you can let an LLM or embeddings model use their attention, instead of yours, on the low-relevance items by filtering them out.
Some options:
- https;//scour.ing
- https://feeds.fun
- https://zacusca.net (disclosure: mine, and still pretty janky)
(I think) the thing is that you are not meant to get served content that is specifically for you. (insert this hole was made for me img) [1])
You get someone’s stream of content and you have to decide whether you are okay with the friction between what they are serving and yourself or if you are not and then unsubscribing.
This is the same reason why AI generated music is soulless and isn’t liked. If music can be made especially for you in milliseconds to soothe your mood or to suit your situation it isn’t art, it’s entertainment slop you’re consuming. Art and things created by other people doesn’t have to pander to you, it expresses something they made and you are allowed to observe or interact with it. What caused the creator to create it is what gives it meaning, when you start having to arbitrage your creations with the consumer (to become more appealing for more people) that’s when you start losing credibility and the start of selling out.
A few of the most heinous examples of people selling their dignity for ‘the algorithm’ to recommend their stuff to more consumers are those who impact their content for retention. An easy one is Mr. Beast, entire videos are focused solely around retention. If the team behind that channel finds something that gets them more appeal to their consumerbase they will implement or pivot towards it like there is no tomorrow.
Another scathing example is Jay Z, who - in Moment of Clarity - rapped
“ I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars They criticize me for it, yet they all yell "holla" If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense But I did 5 mill' – I ain't been rhyming like Common since (Woo!)”
admitting he has compromised his lyrical integrity for money and influence long before “the algorithm” was the all influential thing.
I guess when it comes down to it, it’s easier to make it in the world without integrity, but that definition of making it is more hollow.
1. https://i.imgflip.com/2uyz7f.png
This is the same reason why AI generated music is soulless and isn’t liked. If music can be made especially for you in milliseconds to soothe your mood or to suit your situation it isn’t art, it’s entertainment slop you’re consuming. Art and things created by other people doesn’t have to pander to you, it expresses something they made and you are allowed to observe or interact with it. What caused the creator to create it is what gives it meaning, when you start having to arbitrage your creations with the consumer (to become more appealing for more people) that’s when you start losing credibility and the start of selling out.
A few of the most heinous examples of people selling their dignity for ‘the algorithm’ to recommend their stuff to more consumers are those who impact their content for retention. An easy one is Mr. Beast, entire videos are focused solely around retention. If the team behind that channel finds something that gets them more appeal to their consumerbase they will implement or pivot towards it like there is no tomorrow.
Another scathing example is Jay Z, who - in Moment of Clarity - rapped
“ I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars They criticize me for it, yet they all yell "holla" If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense But I did 5 mill' – I ain't been rhyming like Common since (Woo!)”
admitting he has compromised his lyrical integrity for money and influence long before “the algorithm” was the all influential thing.
I guess when it comes down to it, it’s easier to make it in the world without integrity, but that definition of making it is more hollow.
1. https://i.imgflip.com/2uyz7f.png
I don't disagree with you. I don't think that LLMs (or any other technology) filtering 'to meet my needs' ought to be my source of art, music or other worthy media. And part of the joy of picking up a printed newspaper or magazine is the sense it has been shaped for a wider audience, not just me, with a stronger shade of objective than subjective.
The point, though, is that if I'm following an ML arXiv feed and I'm interested in recommender systems, I really don't need to trawl through everything on interpretability, image generation etc. to get there, no matter how artful those papers are.
The point, though, is that if I'm following an ML arXiv feed and I'm interested in recommender systems, I really don't need to trawl through everything on interpretability, image generation etc. to get there, no matter how artful those papers are.
> Art and things created by other people doesn’t have to pander to you, it expresses something they made and you are allowed to observe or interact with it.
And that's why you need to curate as it's an expression of your choice. Both by choosing which feeds to follow and which articles to read. Social media is like being in a public square alone while everyone is shouting at you while feeds are more like being in a gathering. In the latter, everyone is already vetted so you just skip from one interesting conversation to another while recognizing keeping track of everything is pointless.
And that's why you need to curate as it's an expression of your choice. Both by choosing which feeds to follow and which articles to read. Social media is like being in a public square alone while everyone is shouting at you while feeds are more like being in a gathering. In the latter, everyone is already vetted so you just skip from one interesting conversation to another while recognizing keeping track of everything is pointless.
I also find myself wanting to go back to RSS for the exact same reasons of 1st paragraph. You own your content and host it. Unfortunately all the RSS readers are too raw and I think one of them has to port over Twitter features, things like: more ephemeral feed instead of an inbox, reply, quote tweet, retweet, like, follow, and new: LLM-driven customizable algorithmic feed.
Do you think you could expand on that? Like how you might imagine an ideal workflow to go? Would there be like a sea of tags that you could wade through, or just an '/all', only items you specifically subscribe to + your connections subscriptions according to some ranking algo? Items would 'fall off' or out of view(?) after X time/X amount of browsing a differently weighted topic?
I ask because being honest, you're a big inspiration for myself, and inadvertently, adding an LLM-curated RSS feed reader as a planned feature to a project I'm working on. (I saw https://github.com/karpathy/LLM101n when I was getting interested in LLMs, and then got inspired by your project to start to attempt to build something like the primer from the diamond age.
Where that leads is that I see an RSS feed reader + curation via self-described or identified interests as being a 'core' piece of information gathering for the 'future' individual and have had it on the to-do list as a feature-add for my project.
I ask because being honest, you're a big inspiration for myself, and inadvertently, adding an LLM-curated RSS feed reader as a planned feature to a project I'm working on. (I saw https://github.com/karpathy/LLM101n when I was getting interested in LLMs, and then got inspired by your project to start to attempt to build something like the primer from the diamond age.
Where that leads is that I see an RSS feed reader + curation via self-described or identified interests as being a 'core' piece of information gathering for the 'future' individual and have had it on the to-do list as a feature-add for my project.
As per LLM-driven feed, check the Analyst feature in Matcha rss reader which generates simple MD files and you have more control.
https://github.com/piqoni/matcha?tab=readme-ov-file#analyst-...
https://github.com/piqoni/matcha?tab=readme-ov-file#analyst-...
> more ephemeral feed instead of an inbox
How would that work?
How would that work?
Let your reader only show randomly selected posts from all your feeds, for instance.
I can still funnel most stuff I want to read into one place, a RSS reader, that's the main advantage for me. Whether I can read everything I've subscribed to is another question. I've had to cull a number of sources to reduce the amount of reading, but sadly I'm still skim reading a lot of it.
Media theory and critical thinking are sorely lacking in public education, and the lack of media literacy has never been more apparent. It sounded absurd, taking precious time away from teaching math to watch movies? But this is the first generation coming of age right now to have been exposed to mass communications in ways/amounts that have never existed--I suppose that's been true of each of the last several dozen generations, but it's crossed a threshold that I believe necessitates special care in raising adults who can better discern trustworthy sources, interpret and think critically about what they see/hear/read, and do precisely as this article recommends and filter your incoming information in a thoughtful and intentional way.
One thing I highly miss from using RSS is never having to rescan over items I’ve already decided I’m not going to read. The occasional post about RSS usually gets me back on the wagon.
Why do you keep falling off the wagon? That is the real question to ask.
This is a really cool idea. I'm a fan of RSS, and the biggest challenge with RSS is curating a good list of feeds. I joined up on 'follow.it'!! Is there a place to have discussions about this site and concept? Like on Reddit or Twitter/X? Because I have my own Social Media apps that I'd like to integrate into this ecosystem, and would love to discuss ideas with others, and I don't trust this HN thread as a legit place to host said in-depth discussion.
I recently figured out a good way to handle having more subscriptions than I feel like reading in Newsblur.
I have one group (“0-front”) for feeds that I usually read immediately (such as favorite comics) and many more groups of feeds that seemed interesting at the time. I will catch up with the first group, but only read the rest when I feel like it.
I have one group (“0-front”) for feeds that I usually read immediately (such as favorite comics) and many more groups of feeds that seemed interesting at the time. I will catch up with the first group, but only read the rest when I feel like it.
I hope that at some point I can use AI to filter my RSS feed for me. It knows the kind of content I want and the stuff I always skip. Sure it won’t be perfect, but it would let me subscribe to more high volume feeds without having to manually filter everything.
You can do that with the Analyst feature of Matcha RSS.[1] Just write to the prompt what you want back from Analyst feeds. Disclaimer: its my own tool.
[1] https://github.com/piqoni/matcha?tab=readme-ov-file#analyst-...
[1] https://github.com/piqoni/matcha?tab=readme-ov-file#analyst-...
I just filter my RSS subs through a locally running LLM trained on my journal to judge my interests, it then decides what to curate for me based on a prompt (sometimes something totally left field, this stuff always, etc)
Was considering the same. Any GitHub link? If not, what LLM and what kind of pipeline? (If you can share!)
s/the internet/youtube, facebook, instagram, twitter, reddit/
s/twitter/x/
Youtube subscriptions generally work fine, it isn't worth my time maintaining rss feeds for channels. Just make sure you click the button that says subscriptions. I don't use any of the other sites so I can't comment.
The real reason for frustration with personalization algorithms is that nobody is willing to go all the way because of the belief that the individual is evil and any creators that target individuals are promptly banned usually with no reason given at all, breaking some unspoken social rule.
Youtube subscriptions generally work fine, it isn't worth my time maintaining rss feeds for channels. Just make sure you click the button that says subscriptions. I don't use any of the other sites so I can't comment.
The real reason for frustration with personalization algorithms is that nobody is willing to go all the way because of the belief that the individual is evil and any creators that target individuals are promptly banned usually with no reason given at all, breaking some unspoken social rule.
For HN summaries via RSS I've been using gophersignal.com which is FOSS and been pretty happy with it and the dev is adorable.
https://gophersignal.com/
https://gophersignal.com/
funny, I am revisiting rss as a means to escape social media algorithms and doomscrolling. there are lots of good resources in the comments to even further fine tune RSS beyond just being careful about what I subscribe to.
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> We start by finding someone whose judgement we trust and subscribing to their feed...
...and in no time at all, these "someones" will be made offers not all of them will refuse to parlay their trusted judgements into income by marketing agencies. It seems trust will not only need to be gained but also somehow maintained.
...and in no time at all, these "someones" will be made offers not all of them will refuse to parlay their trusted judgements into income by marketing agencies. It seems trust will not only need to be gained but also somehow maintained.
Oh Lord. I miss the hell out of bloglines and wish we could go back to the glory days of RSS but this headline reads like a guy tipping his Trilby before explaining Rock and Mirty.
Back when RSS was more popular, the tyranny of never-ending backlogs was a topic that was discussed somewhat regularly, but it gets glossed over a little these days since RSS talk is naturally enclosed within a layer of nostalgia
For a few years now my approach has basically been "read it now or read it never" - this means that my RSS feeds are typically empty and I never save anything to "read it later" queues
If it's something I'm supposed to read, it'll probably be resurfaced one way or another (or maybe it won't, and that's fine too) at a later time when I'm immediately ready to pick up what is being put down