How RSS beat Microsoft

Certainly! Here's a summary of the themes discussed on Hacker News regarding RSS, complete with direct quotes:

The Perceived Decline and Resilience of RSS

Several users believe that RSS has seen a significant decline in mainstream usage, often attributing this to the rise of social media and platform-centric content consumption.

• PeterStuer stated, "And then Google and Facebook killed RSS."
• rob humorously commented, "I'm sure there's still some people using a Ford Model T to drive around as well."
• charcircuit noted, "RSS did not weather Twitter. Social media is huge compared to RSS. It turned out that singular recommendation feeds are able to push URLs around better than needing every site to build in feeds themselves and then still requiring someone to turn those feeds into a singular feed for the user."
• giancarlostoro recalled, "I was going to say, RSS is not as big as I remember it being back in the late 2000s. I remember people having RSS clients, myself included."
• zahlman observed, "Meanwhile, RSS is barely relevant today. For decades (Youtube turned 20 this year), people have had access to feeds curated by 'the algorithm' operated by a commercial interest (hoping to maximize the amount of ads you look at); and most people seem to prefer it that way, if they're even aware of alternatives."

However, a strong counter-argument suggests that RSS is far from dead, particularly among tech-savvy users, and remains a resilient protocol.

• zenmac argued, "One can say that, but can you really kill RSS when it is protocol? It is an easier way to keep track of all the updates from different sites."
• latexr asserted, "RSS is alive and well. It’s rare that I find an interesting website where RSS makes sense and it doesn’t exist. Even if they don’t advertise it, popping the website’s address into a feed reader tends to be enough to find it."
• frizlab enthusiastically declared, "I read HN top submissions through RSS \o/ I have a lot of other feeds too in my reader. I don’t think I could function without it, newswise."
• jaredcwhite highlighted its consumer-first nature: "RSS isn't a format that's super-helpful for publishers. There are a variety of reasons why. But it's an absolute dream for consumers. And that's what makes it so awesome, so powerful."
• rambambram countered the notion of a "war," stating, "What 'war'? RSS is an open standard and still going strong. It doesn't need to win or compete or whatever business words from warfare are hyped nowadays. It just needs to exist. The genie is already out of the bottle, for 20+ years."
• firefoxd observed a resurgence: "RSS died so many times. But as my google traffic is steadily declining with AI overviews, my RSS readership has exploded."

The User Experience and Discoverability of RSS

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the practicalities of using RSS, including the ease of finding feeds, the tools available, and the integration into browsers and applications.

• pndy lamented the removal of built-in RSS features: "Mozilla decided to remove its fantastic live bookmarks feature that seamlessly integrated RSS within bookmarks in 2018 with Firefox 64. Someone then made an extension..."
• rob offered a wry observation on the user base: "I'm sure there's still some people using a Ford Model T to drive around as well."
• IgorPartola pointed out the friction: "First, RSS has a bit more friction. Smashing the follow button on Twitter et al is faster than adding the feed to your RSS reader of choice unless your OS has support for default RSS app."
• NicuCalcea and Latitude7973 recommended tools for finding and using RSS feeds: "I use RSSHub Radar which finds both native feeds and some RSS-ified feeds for websites that don't support it." and "I use Folo which has Rsshub built in."
• frou_dh explained a common method for finding feeds: "With decent RSS apps, you can generally just paste in the URL of any page (or the site's homepage) and they will take care of examining the HTML to find the URL of the actual feed."
• latexr confirmed the ease of use: "Any half-decent feed reader app will do it for you after just pasting the website’s address."
• jayelbe noted the historical browser integration: "Browsers used to detect this and show an RSS icon near the address bar if the website you were viewing had a feed..."

The Nostalgia and Potential of Physical RSS Feeds

A unique and recurring theme was the idea of converting RSS feeds into physical newspapers or print media, evoking nostalgia and a different mode of content consumption.

• oDot introduced the concept: "This is especially timely, as I'm currently building a service that let's you receive your RSS feed as a physical newspaper."
• rafterydj expressed a similar idea: "I've had this same idea! Of course, it remains an idea never taken out of the garage."
• aa-jv discussed the challenges and potential of such a service, including vending machine concepts: "Nowadays, I'm not so sure I'd be so willing to do this - again, because it requires the user do the printing - but if you were to, say, make this into a vending machine product... you might be onto something."
• newsclues also considered the practicalities: "I’ve thought of this (worked in book sales so the espresso printers were around for print on demand books... But I think the actual distribution system would be the killer, unless it’s at a big resort the transportation will kill the idea."
• oDot elaborated on the delivery: "Typesetting is a challenge so broadsheet vs tabloid is undetermined, but whatever it will be it will be delivered to the door. The newspaper paper is a crucial part, I believe."
• benoliver999 shared a past attempt at a similar service: "Many moons ago I tried out a service [0] that did this with pocket articles (although I used to send to pocket vis RSS). It was pretty good! It didn't last long though."

Curation vs. Algorithmic Discovery

The discussion touches upon the trade-offs between the curated nature of RSS feeds and the algorithmic recommendations offered by platforms like Google Discover or social media feeds.

• NiloCK raised concerns about curation: "My feeds are pretty unpredictable - sometimes I have 40 new articles in a day, sometimes just a few... But if some SaaS is curating my feeds for me, I fear it'll turn into another algorithmized something optimizing for what exactly?"
• oDot acknowledged the challenge: "You got it exactly right, curation and typesetting are the most challenging aspects of it."
• kelvinjps10 suggested a hybrid approach: "Maybe you first get the summary on your phone and you decide what to be printed?"
• kevstev described their high volume of feeds and preference for manual curation: "Yeah- I get about 300 new items each day in my feed... of which on average about 1% of those are worth reading the full article."
• IgorPartola detailed the advantages of algorithms: "A monolithic platform can do more to try to mix in new content based on your interests and intelligently mix up the content from sources you follow. This is of course controversial because feed algorithms can also try to cram bullshit into your feed or hide important stuff from you or create an echo chamber."

The Technical Aspects of RSS: Format, Validity, and Invasiveness

A segment of the conversation delves into the technical merits and drawbacks of RSS, including debates about its format, validity, and its limitations compared to newer protocols or platform-specific tracking.

• lloydatkinson expressed a preference for Atom: "I think, as someone that has a RSS feed on my blog, that RSS is a total mess and Atom was probably the better choice."
• masfuerte criticized its design: "RSS was so badly designed that early versions weren't actually valid XML. I never understood why anyone used it after Atom was created."
• account42 defended its widespread use: "Because people care about publishing or getting updates, not about the thing delivering them being valid XML or not. RSS works. Atom splitting the standard into two probably did more harm than good."
• Vinnl asserted RSS's continued usability: "Despite Twitter being big, RSS is still widely used and, perhaps more importantly, widely supported and thus usable. That counts as weather in my book."
• PaulHoule identified a core problem with polling-based RSS: "To consume an RSS feed you poll it. There are two polling speeds: too fast and too slow, and it's possible to be both at the same time."
• account42 countered this by mentioning HTTP caching: "This is really not much of an issue if both sides implement HTTP caching (If-Modified-Since or Etags)."
• latexr noted the existence of modern alternatives: "That’s what JSON Feed is. It’s Lsupported by several RSS readers." and clarified ActivityPub's purpose: "No, that’s for social networking."

Monetization and the Inability to Track Users Invasively

The challenges of monetizing RSS feeds and the lack of built-in, invasive tracking compared to social media platforms were repeatedly brought up as significant commercial disadvantages.

• Havoc stated, "RSS has more of a commercial problem. You can’t put ads in it so sites are incentivized to force a site visit."
• em-bee offered a pragmatic view on ads within feeds: "why not? you can format ads as an entry in the rss feed. in fact it would not even bother me."
• jasonjayr elaborated on the tracking issue: "What you can't do, is add all sorts of invasive tracking to RSS to confirm that the user saw the ad, and that it wasn't filtered out."
• smelendez contrasted RSS with email tracking: "With RSS, you generally don't have any information about who's accessing the feed other than an IP address."
• MrJohz suggested that wider adoption could have led to better tracking solutions: "If RSS has been more common, I imagine the bigger RSS readers... would also have standardised on other ways of tracking clicks and ad views..."
• zahlman commented on the economic model: "Everywhere that ads are the only way to create revenue streams, that should be considered a commercial problem in itself. It should be way easier to pay (and charge) securely for services like this by now."
• yoz-y mentioned the evolution of podcast ads: "Some podcasts do dynamic ad insertion. It has a plethora of inconveniences, but it does exist."
• scarface_74 provided an example of successful monetization via sponsored posts: "John Gruber (Daring Fireball) has made his entire living for 20 years by putting a once a week sponsored post in RSS along with the full content of his posts from his site in RSS."

The Enduring Value of Control and Openness

Despite the challenges, many users express a strong preference for RSS due to the control, privacy, and open nature it offers compared to algorithm-driven platforms.

• renegat0x0 declared their allegiance: "the moment platform drops RSS, I drop the platform."
• jaredcwhite lauded it as a "consumer-first feature of the open web."
• PaulHoule highlighted the lack of imagination in the RSS reader community: "If anything characterizes the RSS community it is a lack of imagination and rejection of the last 25 years of work in relevance, ML and UX. RSS readers are still failing with the same failing interfaces that failed 25 years ago."
• The sentiment that RSS remains vital for those who value control over their information flow is evident throughout the discussion.