Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.
Here’s how to use #RSS.
I’ve started using RSS again. The algorithms don’t work. They don’t show me enough useful things from people I purposely follow and want to read. And they aren’t supposed to @molly0xfff
I’m preparing an email for my friends who are still only on Big Tech social platforms… telling them if they want to follow what I’m up to, they could add my Fediverse profile’s RSS feed to their readers…
Well, many are not very technical and I’m sure they don’t use RSS readers, so I can include a link to your post now. Thank you!!! 😊
Weirdly enough, many sites do have RSS and Atom feeds implemented in their source code, but on the surface there are no signs of it whatsoever. This is different from back in the day, when most news sites had prominent RSS buttons and logos.
One big thing that makes it harder for me as an artist to go all in on RSS is that community is 90% of what I do. Not just financials either - I rely on critters commenting on my pieces in public. It's both a huge motivator and a big part of why I think my work is valuable.
I've nothing against critters sharing my work in places I can't see, but it's hard to build an actual community around that. Even if an RSS reader had a "share on Fediverse" button in it, it would be easier for me to recommend.
I would love to go in on an RSS ecosystem that didn't feel so insulated and individual, but I don't want critters just passively consuming my art, I want it to be a group activity.
(Sorry I’ll leave now…) 🙄
The apps let users subscribe to newsletters and read them in an environment designed for a better reading experience. A nice idea. The problem is the apps don't subscribe the email addresses of users but generate app specific addresses that effectively capture the relationship between writers and readers.
very nice to see people getting behind feeds, and finally the journalists are realizing it was a mistake to let others do their distribution.
Thank you for writing this, and especially for a general audience! Make RSS a norm again!
@FontsInUse has long provided RSS feeds for many aspects of our site. Not just the Blog and Uses, but also any typeface, designer, foundry, or tag. It’s a great way to get notified on stuff you care about.
RSS is great for news, and I direct my newsletters to an RSS reader when I can. But that often does not work so well.
I wish more newsletter publishers made sure to have RSS feeds for their newsletters.
News organizations are increasingly launching newsletters in hopes of building a more direct relationship with readers, as traffic from platforms they once relied on — like social media and Google Search — continues to shrink.
But the explosion in newsletters is overwhelming as a reader. Instead of one paper with a dozen writers, you’ve got a dozen newsletters scattered across your inbox.
What if you could curate your own custom newspaper? All your favorite writers, no spam, no surveillance.
Although I regularly read about “the death of RSS”, RSS is still alive and well, and I’ve been using it for more than a decade. Here’s how you can too.
I wish more sites would support it. I use Feeder on Android and some other fucking thing on my desktop, but it's key to getting my daily news without all the social media bollocks. Just the news from sources I trust without general public commentary/noise. I feel like it is making a comeback however.
I do live by the reader I have now btw. Why anyone would not use one is beyond me.
If you need ideas, I publish some of my blogroll: https://mollywhite.net/blogroll/
Some websites don’t publish RSS feeds — often paywalled websites or newsletters. Increasingly, RSS readers are incorporating features that allow you to send newsletters to your feed reader via email, and there are also services like Kill the Newsletter that can do this for you.
3. Read! As you use RSS more, you can make different “newspapers” for different purposes.
![Add your sites
Once you select a feed reader, add the feeds you wish to follow. Most feed readers let you paste a website’s URL to find available RSS feeds. Some websites have multiple RSS feeds, like Wired, which allows you to subscribe to a firehose of all articles or trim things down by subscribing separately to specific topic feeds like science or cybersecurity.
[Image: Inoreader feed results for wired.com, showing an all posts feed and a feed called “Science latest”]](https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/948/828/219/508/808/original/f820d9657d064177.png)
