Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.

Unfortunately, RSS is no longer how most of us consume “content.” (Google famously killed its beloved Google Reader more than a decade ago.) It’s now the norm to check social media or the front pages of many different sites to see what’s new. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: Especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms choosing what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the internet. Here’s a primer on what RSS can (still!) do for you, and how to get started with it, even in this late era of online existence.

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    9 months ago

    I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.

    • nadir@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      9 months ago

      Or if they do, it’s not the full article. Which I get, them being in the business of selling ads and all.

      • harsh3466@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 months ago

        This is why I stopped using rss. I fucking hate seeing an headline I’m interested in, clicking to expand and then having to click through to the site to read the article, dismiss the goddam email list overlay, fight with the stupid paywall, and then close the tab out of frustration.

        I miss the days of actually reading articles in my rss feed reader.

    • CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Perhaps I’m just an old 40 year old fart, but the Internet was better before. I miss the 00s and the 10s. Now it’s just paywalls, LLM generated bullshit, and search results from SEO orgies

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      9 months ago

      I’m still finding rather many RSS feeds, though there’s few buttons these days. Ideally, you want something that auto-discovers feeds on a webpage.