RSS can heal your relationship to information

I'm sure you've heard of RSS. Maybe you've seen the orange button with the 'wifi' symbol in it (like the one at the top of my blog page). If you're new to the internet then maybe you haven't. RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is an open technology from 1999 which allows a website to announce when new content has been posted. In effect, you can 'subscribe' to a website, like a youtube channel, and see all new content when it is posted. Since the early 2010s, that bright orange logo has slowly been disappearing from web pages, and RSS has all but died in the public eye. Now, you might say: "If RSS is dead, why am I learning about this? And even then, why would I use them instead of twitter?" and to this I would say the death of RSS was... greatly exaggerated. Websites may not advertise it anymore, but the feeds still exist, hidden on the page. And since most websites support RSS, it becomes a great tool to control the flow of information in your life. That's what it's ultimately about: control. You decide what content you want to see. You decide when you want to see it. You make every decision along the way, rather than leaving the decision for a machine to make for you.

Some more benefits:

• No ads: They can't inject advertising into your feed, so all you see is the content you want
• Ease of accessibility: the look can be standardised to format text your way, making it legible.
• Saves time: Instead of browsing websites for content, it is all centralised into one reader, so you can switch on and off whenever you feel like it.
• No Algorithm: You choose what content to see or not. It is displayed in order, and is inherently less addictive.

I am hearing you think to yourself "I'd still have to use social media though, to read posts from people I like." but here's the best part: almost all major social media can be read as RSS. Youtube, reddit, bluesky, tumblr, mastodon, etc. All allow you to have a chronological feed of an account (or subreddit) you want to follow, which is what really sells the technology for me. And it's incredibly versatile. It supports not just blogs, but podcasts, videos, anything you can think of adding to a webpage. In your reader, you can organise different feeds into folders and do some really advanced things, but this is just a simple overview.

If you've been finding the internet to take over your life a little, and you want to have more control, or want to reduce addiction, try checking out RSS. The best way for a beginner is through a provider such as feedly, which will aggregate content even when you are offline, and makes finding websites to follow easier. A good first feed to follow is https://xelfin.net/blog/rss.xml, so you never miss a new post. It can take some effort to get started, but once you curate your feed the way you like it, it becomes a wonderful tool. Try it, and if it isn't for you, then nobody will be disappointed.