Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

3 mesi fa

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
3 mesi fa

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!

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in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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!..

Oblomov reshared this.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Joel

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.

Melancholic Mediocrity reshared this.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

Hey, they had to make space in the codebase for all those revolutionary AI features their users were demanding!

(yes, I'm being sarcastic)

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

Thankfully Awesome RSS exists. Unfortunately it currently only has around 4600 users.

Awesome RSS – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Awesome RSS for Firefox. Puts an RSS/Atom subscribe button back in URL bar. Supports "Live Bookmarks" (built-in), Feedly, & Inoreader

^{addons.mozilla.org}

in reply to Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼

rastinza

in reply to Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼 3 mesi fa

Most of the times adding /RSS or /feed to the URL is enough to get the feed. That's mostly good to me.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

mkb

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

I assume it's because they'd rather serve us adverts when we visit the websites.

in reply to mkb

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to mkb 3 mesi fa

@mkb honestly, in most cases I am pretty sure it's a complete lack of understanding.

@mkb

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

coleadve

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@mkb I’d say laziness. “Everyone has facebook/twitter”. Why should they host a website with news when it can be consumed in these other platforms. So annoying. Would much rather stay in my rss reader. Esp. with no fb/twitter anymore

@mkb

in reply to mkb

memo 📎

in reply to mkb 3 mesi fa

@mkb i like the way the 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

selfh.st - Self-hosted content and software

Self-hosted news, content, updates, launches, events, and more

^selfh.st

@mkb

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Alex

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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!

github.com/robalexdev/blog-que…

GitHub - robalexdev/blog-quest: Collect RSS feeds as you browse

Collect RSS feeds as you browse. Contribute to robalexdev/blog-quest development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

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in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

bananamangodog

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Epic Null

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

And in terms of the funnel? You are literally catering to people already interested in your shit!

Unknown parent

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Unknown parent 3 mesi fa

@james fantastic, good to know!

I'll spare you the innumerable counter-examples.

@James Cridland

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Ben Stokman

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

very few businesses owners have even a decent idea of what their business is

in reply to Ben Stokman

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Ben Stokman 3 mesi fa

@benjistokman having worked at a media NGO, I cannot even express how true this is.

@Ben Stokman

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Mister Wanko

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

django

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Oliver Schafeld

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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: rss-parrot.net

RSS Parrot

Home of RSS Parrot, a free Fediverse service that lets you turn Mastodon into an RSS or Atom feed reader.

^{rss-parrot.net}

#mastodon #fediverse #rss

filobus reshared this.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Riley S. Faelan

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

Er, a part of it might be, there's a semi-standard way to link an RSS feed to a website, and browsers used to display these links automatically, but modern browsers don't do it anymore. You'll note that this blog post explaining it is twenty years old, which some people born yesterday (or maybe within the last twenty years) would argue makes it obsolete. blog.whatwg.org/feed-autodisco…

The WHATWG Blog — Feed Autodiscovery

^{blog.whatwg.org}

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Franz Graf

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

sometimes I write those companies that this is missing. Some even reacted and fixed it.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 reshared this.

in reply to Franz Graf

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Franz Graf 3 mesi fa

@hikingdude oh, nice work!

@Franz Graf

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Franz Graf

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

yeah well, often enough the website maintenance is outsourced. If someone never asked for the RSS feed, it's just not there, or it was disabled by accident, or forgotten after a migration...

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Arapalla

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

Can you track engagement?
Can you tailor advertising?

I don't know, but I'm guessing they do. 😒

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

R.I.Pienaar

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@ace they don’t care about “reaching their audience” when the medium doesn’t allow easy monetisation - reach without income has no value to them.

@Alexander Olofsson | Ananace

in reply to R.I.Pienaar

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to R.I.Pienaar 3 mesi fa

@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!

@Alexander Olofsson | Ananace @R.I.Pienaar

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

R.I.Pienaar

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@ace those shares are not typically full body copy so people come back to eye ball some ads.

@Alexander Olofsson | Ananace

in reply to R.I.Pienaar

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to R.I.Pienaar 3 mesi fa

@ripienaar @ace if only there was a way to include only teasers in RSS/Atom feeds!

@Alexander Olofsson | Ananace @R.I.Pienaar

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

YanK l'Innommé

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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 😉

Questa voce è stata modificata (3 mesi fa)

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Nafeon the Bear

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

doesn't help that browsers disabled the icon indicating RSS and instead you need addons bringing it back.

in reply to Nafeon the Bear

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Nafeon the Bear 3 mesi fa

@NafiTheBear I said don't get me started 😛
mstdn.social/@rysiek/115850916…

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

2026-01-07 00:11:41

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!..

@Nafeon the Bear

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Nafeon the Bear

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

ah we are on the same page then XD.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Mitra

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.)

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

lilo

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.

Questa voce è stata modificata (3 mesi fa)

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Meercat ✅  

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

Agreed. RSS rocks

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

MegatronicThronBanks

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

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.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Anneke

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@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)

@elmine

in reply to Anneke

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Anneke 3 mesi fa

@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.

@Anneke @elmine

in reply to Anneke

elmine

in reply to Anneke 3 mesi fa

@Anneke You can also make a teaser RSS feed as a subscription based outlet, just like you would tweet new headlines to lure readers to your articles. It would make a lot of sense in today’s siloed environment for people to also follow media outlets on a more independent technology. Media outlets posting to mastodon already have that at their disposal, so why not offer that more prominently on your website? I think that’s the spirit of @rysiek ‘s post.

@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 @Anneke

in reply to elmine

Anneke

in reply to elmine 3 mesi fa

@elmine I get it and I have actually myself set up RSS feeds for the Tubantia that ran for more than a decade after I worked there 😀 but there is noone at the papers doing some modernization direction or thinking about what digital tools to use or how to do it responsibly. Just want to help understand the background here. If it’s something you want and think would be good, a paper would probably be delighted to get help with this stuff, even if they’re part of DPG here

@elmine

in reply to Anneke

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Anneke 3 mesi fa

@Anneke @elmine most online news media seem to have RSS/Atom feeds, they just don't expose them anywhere. It's not even a question of "modernization", but of making visible something that already is there.

@Anneke @elmine

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Anneke

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@elmine well as I said, if you believe in it, go and offer to help them with it! I would try and find a person in a responsible looking role through linkedin of one of the media outlets you like. All you need is an advocate on the inside who you can convince. At least that’s my experience and now that I’m thinking about this I might help my old paper get on Mastodon

@elmine

in reply to Anneke

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Anneke 3 mesi fa

@Anneke @elmine I had worked for a media NGO before, the idea of "helping them" is not foreign to me, I can assure you.

@Anneke @elmine

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

bovaz

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

It's ignorance. I mean that not as an insult: they don't know about RSS. They've never heard of it.
A couple years back I had to explain what it is because the backend colleagues of a friend of mine from a big multinational company were trying to reinvent it.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

friendica (DFRN) - Collegamento all'originale

Andrea R.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 it doesn't pay as a page click

@Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Andrea R.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Andrea R. 3 mesi fa

@harinezumi neither does a facebook post

@Andrea R.

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Space Invader

in reply to Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 3 mesi fa

@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.

@Cory Doctorow

in reply to Space Invader

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

in reply to Space Invader 3 mesi fa

@spaceinvader I did say "don't get me started" on that
mstdn.social/@rysiek/115850916…

@pluralistic

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

2026-01-07 00:11:41

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!..