A Better Way for Consuming Content

Get your news without visiting websites with algorithms that shows content that you don’t want to see.

Algorithms that Dictates What You See

Social media are not designed for showing you the latest and most important news, but for showing you content dictated by an algorithm.

And this content is normally viral, and viral doesn’t mean interesting.

Usually this algorithm prioritizes content that get you angry.

Content that promotes negativity gets more clicks rather than those whose promotes positivity.

That’s the reason why Twitter and Facebook are full of stupid and irrelevant posts (usually).

Of course, it’s really cool when the algorithm shows you content that you like, discovering new people and pages, but that’s not usual.

Without mentioning the annoying ads and more stuff that wants you to click it.

Meta (previously Facebook) knows about this, and encourages it in their products like Instagram and Facebook, and the same for Twitter.

The Solution: News Aggregators (RSS)

RSS is an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication”.

It’s an ancient technology, not promoted so much by companies.

That’s because when you read a post in an RSS Reader, you don’t need to visit the website, and the website can’t show advertisements using Google Ads (for example). You don’t generate traffic; your visits don’t count, at least not if you don’t open the post link in your RSS Reader.

The good thing is that almost every RSS Reader shows you content sorted by date, not by a creepy algorithm that wants you to be mad.

For my website I use a Node.js script that takes the .mdx files inside content/blog and content/portfolio, then generates the RSS Items, those with the rss: true in the metadata.

How to Use an RSS Reader

First, you should download one.

There are many options:

NetNewsWire: a native RSS Reader for macOS and iOS, free and Open Source, my favorite option as an Apple ~~Sinner~~ user
Akregator: from the KDE project for Linux
Feeder: for Android
Raven Reader: desktop cross-platform

Adding Feeds

Now you need to search for the RSS URL on your favorite website, like this one!

https://juancman.dev/rss.xml

If you open it, you’ll get a weird page with code similar to HTML.

Once copied, go to your RSS feed and search for “Add feed” or something similar, and paste the link, and you’re done! Now you’ll get the latest posts from my website.

You can even add feeds from sites like Reddit or YouTube.

Just change [SUBREDDIT] for the name of your subreddit to add:

https://reddit.com/r/[SUBREDDIT]/new/.rss

YouTube

Go to the channel to add, then go to the About tab, then click on Share > Copy channel ID.

Now just change [CHANNEL ID] for the copied one:

https://youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[CHANNEL ID]

My Favorite Feeds

More About RSS

Posted: April 11, 2024