💾 Archived View for technicaltap.airdns.org › gemlog › 2024 › 02-24.gmi captured on 2024-03-21 at 15:01:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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2024-02-24
I've gotten more into the slow web, having discovered the Gemini protocol. I was on this path before, feeling so tired of zombiescrolling Reddit and Facebook all day. I would open Reddit, see mostly the same articles I read ten minutes ago, close it, reopen it, close it, reopen it. And I mean reopening it without realizing that you did. What a horrible existence.
To fix Facebook, I started using the Feeds feature which lists only your friend's posts in chronological order. Then when I got to a post I'd seen before, I closed it.
For Reddit, I started subscribing to the RSS feeds for every subreddit I was interested in. I chose the .../r/subreddit/top.rss?t=week or day URL suffix depending how many posts I wanted per day. Since RSS hosters like Inoreader are being rate-limited to uselessness by Reddit these days, the only real way to do it is to self-host your own RSS.
I use TinyTinyRSS, a very powerful server-based piece of software, which syncs to an iOS app, lire. Some people like the FreshRSS server, too. And of course, there's my favorite old-school Windows/Mac reader, QuiteRSS, which despite being dated holds up well.
With this kind of system I find my zombiescrolling is nearly 100% reduced on those sites. Despite the fact I now spend only a fraction of the time using Reddit/Facebook, I now get more out of them. I see more important posts and I waste much less time. I enjoy the feeling of finality to finishing my RSS. When the rock is clearly out of blood, there is no option to try squeezing more out of it. RSS gives me control over myself on an Internet that's trying to control me.