RSS is awesome

Boy do I feel old if a short, low content PSA about the existence of RSS is considered "hacker news."

RSS is the antidote to algorithm feeds. I’m glad for any mention of it. 90% of the tools users need were built 1970-2000 including RSS.

Having restarted using rss in the past months (after probably 10+ years of not using it) i am now starting to remember why I stopped using it: lack of a personal "algorithm" that made hundreds (if not 1000s) of unread daily items to be manageable.

I know part of it is on me. I need to let go, unsubscribe aggressively, etc... but this is... work?

Im not a regular iOS user, but on it I have feeeeds which actually seem to have a sane personal "algorithm" of sorts that doesn't force ALL feeds items onto me, and also isn't purely chronological.

More readers should have this

Is there still no alternative filling Google reader's void?

Google reader was simple and beautifully designed, free, and online first. There are alternatives but they sacrifice one of the three. Inoreader, the old reader, and newsblur are all pretty good but require a subscription to fully replicate Google reader.

There are various local-first phone apps, desktop apps, and self-hostable apps that are good, completely free and have comprehensive features.

There are some what I would consider bait and switch options like Flipboard and Feedly that pretend to care about RSS but layer on features unrelated to the protocol. I think you can find one that works for you.

The problem with RSS right now is not, imo, the lack of tools to do the reading, thankfully. It's more that the major vote of legitimacy previously extended by Google was revoked and prompted an unwinding from RSS as a universal form of content distribution basically across the whole internet.