Long Live RSS
Like many, I've grown increasingly disinterested in social media over the last year. I still have accounts on X, Substack, Facebook, and others. But I find that there's less and less there that I actually care about. I find myself wading through lots of crap to find the things I want to see. Still, I do like to browse through ideas while waiting in line, at the doctor's office, and so on.
This post from Cory Doctorow entitled You should be using an RSS reader caught my eye a while ago. I used to use an RSS reader all the time. I've tried to get back into it a time or two, but it didn't stick. Inspired by Cory to try one more time, I downloaded the RSS reader he uses (Newsblur) and gave it another shot. This time I coupled it with moving the RSS reader app on my phone to a more prominent position so when I'm looking for something to browse, I see it first.
First I found RSS feeds for some of my friends and publications I like to read. I also discovered that Substack publications have RSS feeds. Many publications don't make finding RSS easy, but it's almost always there. There are a few authors I like on The New Stack and I found that if you enter /rss after the URL for an author or category page, you get RSS for that author or category. For example, here's the RSS page for Jon Udell. Cool.
After adding RSS feeds for things I like (most online publications have one), I started reading things on Newsblur instead of opening up X. Most newsreaders don't have an algorithm. If they do, it is not usually the default setting and can be turned off. If you subscribe to too many feeds, turn it on and let it prioritize your reading. But regardless, you control the experience. Just like you should.
At the end of his post, Cory writes:
Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital lifeāand it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.
From You should be using an RSS reader
Referenced 2025-04-02T13:02:11-0400
Cory's right, using an RSS reader will make your digital life better. I'm wasting less time scrolling past stuff I don't care about and more time reading things I enjoy. That's a win.
Photo Credit: Robot Reading on Phone from DALL-E (public domain)
I also highly recommend Readwise (https://readwise.io). Their RSS reader is excellent and combines many features for spaced repetition review of highlights, as well as collecting information from other sources. It's worth the money.
I vibe coded an app for people who like rss and also make a newsletter. It allows subscriptions (OPML import and export allowed), and a workflow to add items to a newsroom, use ai to summarize or create a snippet, add them to a newsletter, and produce show notes for a podcast or vlog.
Itās called creatorautomation.ai. Itās free but you bring your own ai API keys.