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

Don't depend on corporations to grant you rights. Defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you're on one).

In July of 2023, Bluesky made an initial offering of shares for \$8 million, which was followed in October of 2024 by a \$15 million offering. Eyebrows were raised when the second share offering was led by a firm called Blockchain Capital, especially because the new CEO, Jay Graeber, is a software engineer coming from a blockchain and cryptocurrency background, having previously worked as a developer for cryptocurrency called Zcash.

Naturally investors will seek a return on their investment, so Bluesky will have to find ways of making money. They promise not to do it through advertising, but instead offer subscription services. Right now they offer a way to create a personal domain, and they are also musing about things like charging for higher quality video.

The goal of Bluesky, like any other social media company, is to make money, and as much of it as possible, for those investors and shareholders. The platform for you to share your thoughts with others is not the goal. It's the mechanism.

Cory Doctorow, who has done a lot of thinking about the evolution of tech corporations, which led him to the concept of enshittification, explains why he won't join Bluesky here. Sure, Bluesky is cute and refreshing by comparison to Twitter, but so was Twitter scarcely ten years ago.

The web was not built to be fragmented into walled gardens that are delightfully simple to enter but practically impossible to leave. Quite the opposite, in fact. The web is designed for democracy. We owe it to ourselves to use it in that way.

#Corporations #SocialMedia #Web #Enshittification #Democracy