Back to RSS
Following the recent events at Twitter, I’ve chosen to delete all my content and discontinue using the platform. However, I haven’t been able to fully delete my account yet. Nevertheless, I still feel nostalgic about what Twitter once symbolized. It played a vital role in my online journey for more than ten years, enabling me to connect with fellow developers and establish communities.
Now, with a compelling reason to curb my Twitter dependency, I find myself at an opportune moment to reevaluate my information consumption and sharing habits.
Over time, I’ve grown increasingly vigilant about how products manage my data. Gradually, I’ve migrated towards services that prioritize privacy, such as Fastmail and DuckDuckGo, and more recently, local-first applications like LogSeq.
The decentralized social media space is evolving rapidly with new protocols and services being announced. Mastodon is currently receiving the most attention. I’ve started using it again (my fourth attempt) as more people I follow on Twitter are active there. However, I don’t want to settle for it—I want to focus my attention and effort on returning to RSS feeds.
RSS strikes the right balance of decentralization for me. It enables individuals to host their content wherever they prefer, ensuring control over ownership. All that’s required is to expose an XML file. The rest is in our hands—we can construct everything ourselves or employ services to assist us with publishing. While it might not be the most efficient format for discovery, it has demonstrated its reliability and currently powers the podcasting industry (despite Spotify’s attempts to monopolize it with their walled garden).
I’m confident that RSS will satisfy my need to stay current and learn from other professionals in the web industry. I’ve added all my favorite blogs to Reeder and subscribed to various link aggregators’ newsletters1 with an RSS feed to uncover new content and broaden my horizons.
It seems like we’re entering a new era of social media, and I’m excited to see its evolution. Meanwhile, I’ve returned to using RSS.