How to Use RSS
August 28, 2023•338 words
What is RSS and why should I use it?
RSS is a software protocal used to retrieve news/updates. So think Apple News or the Google News Feed. The primary difference is that you add your own feeds and getting news is pretty much all it does. So while it is a little bit more work to manage your feed, this allows for you to create a less biased feed. Any corporation wants to keep you on their app for as long as possible. So they will tend to collect data and personalize feeds. To quote the Apple News website, "As you read, Apple News gets a better read on your interests, and suggests relevant stories that you can easily find throughout the app." [1] But this means that these news apps create a curated bubble of news that trap you into seeing similar views over and over.
Here are some RSS reading programs:
Cloud: NewsBlur (usable as a site or app or program)
Windows/Mac/Linux: Fluent Reader or Raven Reader
Linux (nerdier): Newsboat
IOS: NetNewsWire
Android: Feeder
Now to get some feeds, you can look for this icon:
Heres a list of other personal blogs.
For social media sites, a lot of them don't support RSS. I think NewsBlur can still handle most social media links, but TBH it's generally not easy to move completely from big social media platforms to RSS. Instead RSS is a good replacement for specifically getting news. That way you can keep in contact with your friends on social media and gets news from a separate, neutral, app. Although, a lot of blogs support rss, such as mine 😉. Here's my the some RSS feeds I use if you want to start out with something similar to me (here's an importable version).
If a news site doesn't have the rss icon, sometimes they just have it hidden. You can get it by ctrl f-ing "rss" in the source code of the page (right click and view source) and copying the URL.