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RSS Thinking

October 26th, 2021

I'm a big fan of RSS, or at least what it does. Gimme all of the stories from the sites I like. Like a lot of folks back in the era before Twitter and Facebook, when blogs, forums and comment sections ruled more of the web, I was a happy user of Google Reader. When Google axed this beautiful app, I eventually landed on using Inoreader as a replacement. I even pay for Inoreader, and a couple years back I was getting the ability to toss my Twitter feed in with my RSS, etc., but eventually Inoreader pared back some of the features such that the plan I pay for basically just stops me from seeing more ads, and I guess lets me subscribe to more feeds. While I love the general feel of Inoreader, I'm still not 100% satisfied with my RSS experience. Why?

What's Cool About RSS?

So, I'm sure most anyone reading this knows what RSS (and Atom) are. A site posts stories. Along with those stories, the site also posts an RSS/Atom feed, a file with a particular XML markup that RSS Feed readers can be pointed to. Your RSS reader can periodically check the feeds it is subscribed to and see if any of those feeds have updated, which lets you keep track of all of the stories your favorite sites are posting. While this is cool, another cool thing is that there are no real centralized services required for this to work. For example, some people apparently get news from places like Twitter and (I can't believe this...) Facebook. On Twitter, you could follow particular organizations and get some news straight that way, and likewise you can see stories amplified through retweets by people you follow, etc. Then, and Twitter and Facebook both do this, some stories are kinda tossed into the margins selected by "The Algorithm", some balance of what those services believe your interests are, popularity, virality, or whatever. I like RSS feeding me what I've consciously chosen. I like that no other intermediary can promote or demote or alter what I'm seeing, it's just between me and the site the feed is from directly. While web based RSS feed readers are an intermediary in a sense, all of the ones I've had personal experience with have stuck pretty close to just presenting the RSS feeds you've chosen to you.

What's Almost Cool About RSS?

When I look at "Social Media", I think to myself... "Boy, couldn't most of this just be posts that friends make to their own places, and I just 'Friend' people by subscribing to their RSS feeds?" This is really really close to the case, except for a couple of things RSS doesn't permit directly itself. Basically, I can't directly reply to an RSS article in a way someone might reply to a Tweet or comment on a Facebook post (nor can they Like, Heart, whatever either, though I care less about this).
RSS gives me a way to see when a site is updated, but... why the separate feed file? What I mean is, if I want my site to have and RSS feed, I have my story presented in HTML but also need another feed file that says basically the same thing in an XML file that feed readers understand. Why the duplication? In the world of the IndieWeb, they have proposed some markup right within the HTML of stories (h-feed and h-entry) so this can all be done without the duplication.
Does the perfect feed reader exist?

My RSS Journey

So anyways... I'm still loving that RSS is still commonly out there and used, that it's still part of the plumbing of a fair number of sites and services. Even if it is not perfect, it is a lot better than nothing, or more proprietary alternatives. I've personally always wanted to self-host an RSS Reader sort of app that keeps the articles I've read all synced between my various devices. I've tried a few things, but haven't reached the promised land yet.

Local RSS Readers

I've tried a good number of these. You used to be able to keep "Live Bookmarks" in Firefox, and can still subscribe to RSS feeds in something like Thunderbird. There are a variety of these programs still, and they seem to have an e-mail style approach. I've not fallen in love with any of these for a couple reasons.

A lot of them are ugly. They are functional, but bring no joy to use.
They are generally local to one device, keeping a small database. You can't simply place a file in a shared cloud folder and use the same app on multiple devices to keep up with your feeds and maintain accurate counts of unread stories, etc.
Being apps outside of the browser, they don't feel as integrated into my browsing experience, where I like to flip through feeds and Ctrl-click on stories I wanna check out.

Web Based RSS Readers

I've checked out a couple of these, and think my best hope lies here somewhere. What have I been thinking?

While Inoreader has been great, and a lot of similar proprietary services are mostly similarly enjoyable, the fact is that they are proprietary. I have a preference for free and moreso self-hosted.
I've tried tt-rss. To self host it is a bit of an administration burden. I don't like it as much as the proprietary ones I've tried. The commmunity around it is kinda gruff and unfriendly.
Nextcloud News: I've installed and used this on my Nextcloud instance! It's OK I suppose. It's just missing a lot of polish. I also hooked up RSS Guard to read stories from my Nextcloud News. It works, but RSS Guard has that ugly e-mail style thing going on you see with a lot of local clients.
FreshRSS: Oh, I've seen videos that make this seem like a promising alternative. I'll just have to see if it's easy enough to get an instance up.

Conclusion

So, there it is. I guess I'm leaning towards trying out FreshRSS, as soon as I can work out the easiest way to self-host it. There are also different things being tried, like Kicks Condor's FraidyCat.