So the idea is that you get an RSS reader, and you subscribe to whatever feeds you want. Do you follow someone who writes periodically on the web? Do you follow a podcast? How about a Youtube channel? A newsletter? Someone on a federated medium, like Mastodon, or Pixelfed? You can subscribe to all these feeds, and get to read/watch/listen to them whenever there's a new post or video or newsletter.

There are quite a few readers available. I'm a big fan of free stuff; I use Feeder on my desktop, which comes with a handy browser extension, and another one also called Feeder for Android on my mobile.

Here is a screenshot of the list of my feeds on my phone:

That little number beside each one on the right indicates new posts that I haven't read yet. Oh look, Alfredo on Mastodon has a new post:

OK, a bit snarky, but really. People shooting at weather stations. Now, I haven't published this post yet, so it's not showing up as unread in my feed list, but notice that I am following leastaction right here on write.as . Let's look at my previous post:

This is in fact a great way to follow this blog. You will know when there's an unread post in your feed reader and read it.

The great thing about RSS is that you are in control. You choose what content you want to follow, not Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. There is no algorithm, no tracking, no advertising, no surveillance. And I should add, that because you choose whom to follow, you are guaranteed to be following actual human beings and not some AI-generated “companion”.

The only reason why you may not have heard of RSS before is that there is no corporation behind it, promoting it constantly. This sort of thing propagates by word of mouth, and because we are so used to having content forced on us, it might even seem to be too good to be true. What's the catch, you're tempted to ask. There simply is no catch. Yes, this is as good as it sounds. This is exactly what the web should be, and it is all available for us to enjoy.

#RSS #Web #Degooglify

But the Play Store isn't the only game in town. F-Droid is a well-stocked repository of free and open source apps for your Android phone.

For instance, there's Newpipe , the app I use to watch Youtube videos outside Youtube itself, so no tracking, etc. By the way, on the desktop there's Freetube which does the same thing.

Today I installed AntennaPod , an open, non-commercial podcast player that allows you to subscribe to any RSS feed. And if you don't know what RSS is, you're not alone. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it deserves an entire post to itself, which is coming very shortly.

#Degooglify #FreeAndOpenSource #smartphones

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