It is absolutely *wild* to me that media organizations still do not put RSS/Atom 
feed info front-and-center on their websites.
One needs to dive into HTML code or use external tools to discover their feeds.
It is wild because this is one of the easiest, least-effort ways to reach their audience. Encouraging RSS/Atom use is a phenomenal way of becoming less reliant on gatekeepers like huge social media platforms.
Come on! 
@rysiek
helpful
https://www.rsslookup.com/
also know, GaleOneFile alerts through your public library provide free full-text access to many many paywalled sites: Economist, Barron's, WaPo, etc.
@rysiek at the same its kinda technical feature + you cant put ads in there
@tragivictoria of course you can put ads in there.
@rysiek I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds via @NetNewsWire and News Blur.
None of the RSS feeds show any adverts from the newspapers or other publications I follow. Maybe this is why some don't market their feeds.
@rysiek @pluralistic Browsers used to auto-find and put an RSS button in the URL bar.
Used to.
I kinda understand why they stopped, but I wish it was a user-selectable option so power users could easily find those feeds. Also, it would allow for the creation of a viral TikTok video about a “secret option” to break free of algorithms which would do more for teaching non-technical users about RSS than anything else ever written.
@spaceinvader I did say "don't get me started" on that 
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/115850916733552056
@rysiek whoops, didn’t see that other post.
But yes. Very yes. Don’t get me started on the infuriating UI decisions which seem to be the ongoing theme lately. 🙂
@harinezumi neither does a facebook post
@rysiek
Mobile first... 
(I'm not aware of any reputable RSS readers for mobile, as I suspect most people aren't, and I'd be quite interested in recommendations tbh... 
)
@rysiek @elmine um, I actually blame the non-considered inclusion of RSS feeds in newspaper website systems in the 90s for the fact people expect their news for free. Newspapers don’t want to reach an audience; journalists do. Newspapers want to keep paying journalists and thus have copyright/control/make money. And they don’t make any off you not going to their website.
(As an idealist I feel similar to you but I also know journalism takes a lot of time and can’t be done as a hobby)
@Anneke @elmine sure, I get that – I had worked at a media org.
But here's the thing, the media orgs keep complaining that social media is so bad for them, eating their cake, not sending people back to their sites, limiting reach, and all that, and yet they keep encouraging people to use that.
RSS/Atom has fewer of these downsides.
@rysiek It is crazy. But it's because they all have this belief that they're special and everyone will track down and read all their articles to the last Oxford comma.
@rysiek So true.
Mind you, many websites do have an RSS feed but don't publicise it (mostly, I suspect, due to ignorance).
I use addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firef… to find "hidden" RSS feeds to follow (on my frendica instance).
Screenshot from my next talk -
@plord @u3acommunitiescomputing
> Mind you, many websites do have an RSS feed but don't publicise it (mostly, I suspect, due to ignorance).
This is kind of my point. Most of these sites *do* have RSS/Atom feeds available. They just decide to hide them.
@rysiek Agreed. RSS rocks
@rysiek Hey, they simply don't need it! They just molest users with a "subscribe to our wonderful newsletter" message which pops up the instant you access the site. Or some seconds later once you started reading.
@rysiek Very true - there is a bunch of media whose sites I've stopped following (including many ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp,that just randomly drop off the map, thinking that being on podcasts is the same thing.)
@rysiek doesn't help that browsers disabled the icon indicating RSS and instead you need addons bringing it back.
@NafiTheBear I said don't get me started 😛
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/115850916733552056
@rysiek ah we are on the same page then XD.
@rysiek I think a big reason is advertising and tracking.
RSS feeds bypass most trackers, analytics, and user profiling, so readers become largely "invisible" from a monetization point of view.
RSS gives control back to readers instead of platforms — and that’s precisely why it’s not encouraged.
On my site, there is RSS 😉
@ripienaar @ace they keep encouraging people to share stuff on social media, where they also (in most places) don't have a way of monetizing – in fact, often they have to *pay* for the reach!
Can you track engagement?
Can you tailor advertising?
I don't know, but I'm guessing they do. 😒
I dive into news websites or blog source code to find an RSS link whenever I find an interesting site that isn't on #Mastodon.
Through #RSS and RSS Parrot I can pull them into the #Fediverse and subscribe to their feed right here.
More at: https://rss-parrot.net
@rysiek in a previous employment, a university news site used RSS extensively, we setup the news site with tags for departments, programs, etc and the corresponding sites or microsites consumed the news which kept them looking very fresh!
I agree not enough organizations do this
@rysiek @Em0nM4stodon media companies want to be the gatekeepers tho
@rysiek mfer they are taking down their RSS feeds... precisely because it's lo-fi and no ads. I have a canary account on IG and the number of RSS feeds crippled is 65% of my original set. CNN is showing a feed from 2023.
@rysiek very few businesses owners have even a decent idea of what their business is
@benjistokman having worked at a media NGO, I cannot even express how true this is.
@rysiek And in terms of the funnel? You are literally catering to people already interested in your shit!
@rysiek #notallmediaorganizations
https://podnews.net - it's literally in the nav bar.
@james fantastic, good to know!
I'll spare you the innumerable counter-examples. 
@rysiek for a while it was more commonplace; then they all caught the advertising bug and started purposefully removing RSS/Atom feeds or making it difficult to use because it generally means less revenue from advertising.
@rysiek unsure if it'd been linked at all (post replies haven't back filled yet) but I use an addon to get some of the auto-detection back. Not ideal having to do so but eases it a bit!
@rysiek Look if we can't engorge 430 cross domain bloaters and data grifters making a page render hundreds of MBs so I can read a paragraph of text, the what is the web even for...
@rysiek I assume it's because they'd rather serve us adverts when we visit the websites.
@mkb @rysiek i like the way the https://selfh.st/ newsletter does it, they has a paid RSS feed without ads, and a free RSS feed that only shows the article title and a link to the website
@mkb honestly, in most cases I am pretty sure it's a complete lack of understanding.
And don't get me started on the absolutely screwed up, hilariously misguided decision by Mozilla to remove the RSS/Atom button from the default Firefox UI a long while back.
You absolutely hopeless nincompoops!.. 
@rysiek I've wondered what happened to that button. I sure miss it!
@rysiek Thankfully Awesome RSS exists. Unfortunately it currently only has around 4600 users.
Hey, they had to make space in the codebase for all those revolutionary AI features their users were demanding!
(yes, I'm being sarcastic)
@rysiek don’t worry, they are adding an “AI” chat button that you can ask for an RSS feed and get bonus hallucinated content for free.
