I want decentralized services to become mainstream, but it is understandable that people are hesitant. Signing up for new services takes some time and requires password management which many people doesn’t take as seriously as they should. Any pod could also be discontinued for various reasons.

We should advocate RSS because as long as we make the process of using the right reader easy, it is a very convenient way of staying updated on the newest peertube juggling videos, mobilizon hackathon events or pixelfed handstands photos.

We just need to find RSS readers that are cross platform and preserves the users digital rights. That way it is much easier to convince people to join in on the fediverse. This solution will also give more attention to RSS, which is decentralized and ethical as well.

  • Danrobi@lemmy.ml
    81·
    4 years ago

    Agreed 100% I use RSS everywhere possible. Mastodon should have a RSS Feed link on every instance by default ! No way I’ll use email as notification. F email !

      • Danrobi@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 years ago

        Good to know, Thanks for sharing. Regardless, a RSS Feed icon link in the frontend would be handy.

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 years ago

        It only works for public toots though. It would be nice if I could subscribe via mastodon and get a private RSS URL that included toots (including private) from everyone that I follow.

        I also like email, I would like if I could get emailed every toot. (But my RSS goes to my email so that works for me)

        • Niquarl@lemmy.ml
          1·
          4 years ago

          You want to get an RSS feed for all your subscriptions? I think PeerTube does that now. Maybe open an issue for Mastodon as I have no idea if anybody has ever asked for that before.

          • kevincox@lemmy.ml
            1·
            4 years ago

            That’s cool! Last I checked peertube doesn’t support subscribing to mastodon accounts though. Maybe I’ll try it out. Most of my friends aren’t using peertube though so the private content isn’t as useful to me there.

  • Deadnaut@lemmy.ml
    5·
    4 years ago

    +1 for always using RSS in some form, but I only recently stopped using free services like feedly to set up my own miniflux server. I think RSS is just one part of a larger picture, bur there are a couple of things that spring to mind to would help adoption -

    • Webhosts or ISP need to provide one-click app stores for hosting setup.
    • Techy family members need to promote and be willing to maintain services
    • Devs need to make auto-updates, management a straightforward process.
    • Deadnaut@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 years ago

      Re: the first point I installed nextcloud via a one-click app installer on my host and it made the process effortless, no ssh needed.

  • WhitePaperKat@lemmy.ml
    61·
    4 years ago

    the day that normies start using federated networks like mastodon or using RSS feed readers will be nothing but a pipe dream that is a guarantee there will always be a few people like us but if it ever dose become main stream it will only be shown in negative light hell i bet your bottom that they will try to slander even you as alt right

      • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
        5·
        4 years ago

        But strictly speaking, an RSS feed, (often with itunes: extensions) with links to media files is what a podcast is.

          • Niquarl@lemmy.ml
            2·
            4 years ago

            I’m honesty a bit surprised. Perhaps I’m not “normie” enough but there are loads of podcast apps after iTunes. Yeah podcasters mention iTunes because of the reviews but they also often say something like “or wherever you get your podcasts from”. A lot of websites have got direct links to the RSS too.

            Actually podcasts might be the last thing RSS is actually popular for honestly.

            • ufra@lemmy.ml
              1·
              4 years ago

              I never really thought much about it, but if someone asked if Apple hosts podcasts, I probably would’ve said yes, thinking it was like youtube. I’m aware of other apps but I didn’t think many podcasters managed their own hosting. These guys were talking about running his own in-house server to avoid corporate interests from taking them down like YT was doing.

              I don’t know if that is a threat for other podcasters, but I naively thought Apple could shut down a podcast. Thank s for the insights, it’s something on my list to look more into one day.

  • Vegafjord eo@lemmy.mlOP
    4·
    4 years ago

    I have just started using RSS, but I’m currently using newsblur. It is cross platform, but I don’t know whether it preserves the users digital rights.

  • qoheniac@lemmy.ml
    3·
    4 years ago

    I never stopped using RSS, I thought it’s still very common. I use my Nextcloud’s RSS reader and there are clients for many platforms that can sync with it.

  • Vegafjord eo@lemmy.mlOP
    2·
    4 years ago

    I believe that our digital rights are: the right to privacy, the right to autonomy over our tools (free and right to repair), right to internet access and right to free speech. For RSS readers, we only have to inspect whether the right to privacy and right to autonomy over tools is preserved.

  • squirmyfermi@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 years ago

    there are self-hosted options out there, but these are too complicated for every day users. How are feedly and feeder as RSS readers for someone with a low/non existent privacy threat model?

  • Gwynne@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 years ago

    so umm, you wanna exchange your rss feeds with me?

    aha ha, just kidding…

    unless…?