kradeelav | (no subject)

I had somebody recently ask me what a RSS reader is, and why to use it. We're all on here, the site for those who make handmade pages and/or have a print book reading challenge, there's a 90% we're at least familiar with a concept of a RSS feed, so I won't get into that.

What was interesting, though, was coming up with my list of "Why I use RSS", and how it differentiates from the common talking points.

The biggest advantage for RSS feeds/readers to me, is not the "grab from lots of different sites" or "read at your own time" bits, but the privacy aspect. I am immensely reassured that there's no squad of ghosts hanging over the shoulder raising their eyebrow at a "flagrantly heterodox" feed/blog or two (or five or ten...) because it's none of their goddamned business. I don't even want to say "I've learned the best from the folks who I disagree the most" because at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what you read, only that there's the freedom to do so*.

(I used to scroll through twitter likes/following more often than actual twitter feeds because there were less retweets to be found and more genuinely cool/daring/opinionated stuff. So uh, I am absolutely part of the problem here in some senses though I always used that information passively and positively.)

Needless to say, simple "privacy of feeds" is a reasoning I'm really surprised that hasn't come up more, especially with the rise of social media where it's almost a ... default? assumed stance? that everyone gets to see your following/likes in a literal digital panopticon. Except, strangely enough, tumblr.

Man, tumblr had a lot of things right.

*this is a generality. I'm more hardcore freedom-of-speech-especially-with-the-arts than most even on here, but only a sith deals in absolutes. : P

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ficklecrow

Yes, my feelings exactly!! It also feels less saturated with information. Less advertising, less excess; more relaxed.

mizerable

Can confirm I used to go through people's twitter likes a LOT because I often found a lot more interesting stuff than what people would actually retweet. Mostly interesting R18 content that people did not want to retweet or do so publicly, but yeah. Like I mentioned, I use the RSS reader you do and while I don't use it a lot, I do enjoy it rather than clicking 100 different websites and being tracked on all of them.

tei

That’s a really good point. I kind of fell off using an RSS reader and was trying to use Dreamwidth for that purpose, since you can add feeds to your reading list here, it just… doesn’t work all that great, and there are some kinds of feeds (YouTube channels specifically, which I sometimes want to follow but don’t want to get a google account that I actually use) it can’t handle, and now that you mention it, the privacy aspect is part of that— that it lists all your feed subscriptions in your profile isn’t a great feature.

I used to pay for The Old Reader, years back, but idk if there is a better option now? I mean, I’m sure there are lots of RSS readers, a wealth of choice haha

kradeelav

Ooh thank you for letting me know you can follow other feeds on here as well! :o that's actually super cool even if it's not private ... at least it's an emergency backup there if you need it.

There's a few around; imo I've had a good experience with Inoreader in that it just ... does the job (disclaimer: I do pay for the ability to get a limited amount of art twitter feeds, but it felt pretty okay especially in terms of it being essential for getting me off of social media.)

TWITTER FEEDS! Oh god I would love to get twitter feeds via RSS, that absolutely sounds worth paying for, I may look into that one...

:D! it's marvelous - plus you can get surprisingly deep with customizing each twitter-through-RSS feed; I have my filters set up where all the art feeds "only" allow tweets with a) no retweets, and b) has some kind of image, that way it blocks the usual inane nonsense that people have a tendency of retweeting.

Inoreader also gives you the option of following private twitters - you just have to have a twitter account to grant it access, essentially. (I have a burner private account that acts as the funnel there).

Would recommend - haven't been on that bird site since June between that setup, and being able to schedule my art posts through the end of the year.

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