Post #2008699

2026-05-04 18:38 UTC

The other thing that died, I guess, was the enthusiasm in the Big Web industry to jam RSS everywhere. There was a lot of weird hype back in those days, and for some reason people thought they could make money from it. Of course, the reality was the opposite: RSS empowers the *operators* of Internet-capable devices, rather than the parasites who try to extract money from the Web. That is why the weird hype died and megacorporations stopped making weird announcements about how they are transforming everything with RSS. But that stuff was never the soul of it, and it didn't matter at all.

Replies (3)

@stuebinm@pleroma.stuebinm.eu 2026-05-04 19:22

@jonmsterling i always suspect this is less about it actually being 'dead', and people being unaware that one can, indeed, step slightly outside of what is the current mainstream, and find useful tools with widespread support there, too. RSS is not dead, but its presence as a default-tech-giant-preinstalled-everywhere-app category is, and to some people that appears to be the same (?)

Open ##2008706
@rauschma@fosstodon.org 2026-05-05 18:24

@jonmsterling I absolutely love feeds—they are how I consume news. JSON Feeds is now also widely supported and even easier to implement than RSS or Atom.

Open ##2058405
@lord@pleroma.lord.re 2026-05-05 18:37

@jonmsterling This memesque-idea probably come from user frustrated that mainstream social media (facebook…) didn't want to provide RSS feeds and those platforms became the only way to get news from mainstream celebrities and even some events/movies/restaurants. Those platforms created those walled-garden far from our rss readers.

Open ##2058406