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I ditched the algorithm for RSS

(joeyehand.com)
744 points DearNarwhal | 2 comments | 16 Jan 25 12:18 UTC | HN request time: 5.714s | source
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s1mplicissimus ◴[16 Jan 25 17:07 UTC] No.42727908[source]▶
If I remember correctly "the algorithm" as a concept of feed curation has been introduced by facebook ( or youtube?), long after RSS was used by blogs and podcasts. Heck, even Twitter used to have an RSS feed they killed a looong time ago [1]

I also remember that in the beginning I was chuckling to myself "who on earth would want to have their feed curated by a black box whose target function cannot be checked? If I wanted that, I could just keep reading a single newspaper." - turns out I was very wrong and lots of people seem to prefer just getting washed in a steady stream of somewhat internally consistent worldview.

Would be really nice to see RSS make a comeback

[1] https://sociable.co/social-media/twitter-rss-feed-creator/

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1. wussboy ◴[16 Jan 25 19:15 UTC] No.42729593[source]▶
Many people do not have the technical expertise to set up an RSS feed and so fell into the algo by default.
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2. stonogo ◴[16 Jan 25 20:16 UTC] No.42730316[source]▶
This is partly because the ad-funded browser hegemony removed all the features that made them easy to use, via the common "break it, wait for usage to drop off, then claim nobody uses it and delete it" project management path.