Mastodawn

@davew sorry, dumb question, but why is that great? I mean i see i can read toots in an rss reader, but i already have too many apps made for reading toots. I know you can use it to trigger stuff like ifttt for automation. I have Rss feeds i’d like to import into mastodon, which would seem to make more sense, but isn’t supported

http://scripting.com/2022/12/02/005224.html

@AlexGizis -- it gives us a lever to get Twitter to follow suit and support RSS in their product. See this blog post.

Users as advocates

It's even worse than it appears..

Scripting News

@davew thanks, i see. i assume they’ll crash twitter before they open it up, but it would be better if opened like that!

@AlexGizis -- glad you agree! 🙂

@AlexGizis -- here's another angle. the more people read via RSS, the more options there will be beyond Mastodon. Because RSS is easier to support than Activity Pub and a lot more devs already understand how it works.

Cassandrich Dec 3, 2022

@davew @AlexGizis RSS is a consume-only flow. I'd much rather build communities with bidirectional interaction and discovery. But it does have its place too and I'm glad the 'don supports it.

Kingsley Uyi Idehen Dec 3, 2022

@davew,

Here's yet another angle:

#RSS solves for publication and syndication of posts.

See: https://tinyurl.com/bdex5wys

#ActivityPub solves for Activity Streams which goes beyond posts.

See: https://tinyurl.com/2mxk3rjh

Ultimately, #HTTP software agents will be able to process structured data consuming either.

In my case, it all ends up in a #KnowledgeGraph (using a bookmarking-like interaction pattern). All the data is accessible via #SQL, #SPARQL, #GraphQL, etc..

/cc @AlexGizis @judell

About: Had a busy day experimenting with #gptChat. Here's a summary, generated by our #DataTwingler bot. https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/twingler/?uri=https://twitter.com/kidehen/status/1598804598663389184/cc @judell #ExplainableAI #KnowledgeGraph #SemanticWeb #Web30 #LinkedData #OpenWeb

64 mastodonz logistics co-op Dec 3, 2022

@davew lol old enough to remember when this WAS a twitter feature!

Andrew

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/elonmusk/rss

@davew @AlexGizis FYI Nitter, which is an alternative front-end for Twitter, supports RSS!

Like Mastodon, it has multiple instances, so if you were to use one of the more popular ones:

would be the .rss feed for the twitter account of a certain fella

@davew @spiritedpause @AlexGizis @paul @JPEGuin next question is: do the masto clients support following rss and adding those feeds to your timeline? If so, wouldn’t that mean that you can thus follow folks who haven’t migrated over here yet?

@samvarma @davew @spiritedpause @paul @JPEGuin Not in mastodon, but Friendica (a facebook style activitypub app) supports it. You can follow RSS feeds like they're users:

@samvarma @davew @spiritedpause @paul @JPEGuin Other way around but there's an ActivityPub plugin for wordpress that turns wordpress blogs into full blown bots over here, that a lot of people like (but it's activitypub instead of RSS): https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

ActivityPub

Connect your site to the Open Social Web and let millions of users follow, share, and interact with your content from Mastodon, Pixelfed, and more.

WordPress.org

Denman Rooke Dec 4, 2022

@AlexGizis @samvarma @davew @spiritedpause @paul @JPEGuin ooh that's cool.

Andrew

@AlexGizis @samvarma @davew @paul @JPEGuin yeah friendica is the closest thing i’ve been able to find to that functionality, but I find Friendica too buggy to use over Mastodon.

Andrew

@AlexGizis @samvarma @davew @paul @JPEGuin There's also https://mastofeed.org/ , but it looks to be one feed at a time.

MastoFeed - Send your RSS Feeds to Mastodon

Automated and super easy tool to send the content from your RSS Feeds to any Mastodon instance. We do it all for you.

@AlexGizis @spiritedpause @davew @JPEGuin @paul opportunity knocks… for someone :D Thanks for passing that on!

Anne @annevelink_ad Dec 3, 2022

@davew

oh thats a revelation !

garden center goth Dec 4, 2022

@davew @AlexGizis twitter would be re adding a feature they removed 12 years ago https://sociable.co/social-media/twitter-hasnt-killed-rss-just-yet-heres-how-to-find-your-twitter-feed-rss-url/

Twitter hasn't killed RSS just yet, here's how to find your Twitter feed RSS url

Since redesigning its site Twitter has been accused of killing its previously open ecosystem. The focus of the accusations comes from Twitter's removal of RSS feeds on each user's profile. Twitter has said this is a design glitch that will be fixed but until that happens, if it ever will, there still are ways to get access a Twitter user's RSS feed.

The Sociable

Dave Winer ☕️Dec 4, 2022

@mood @AlexGizis

what's wrong with that? 😉

garden center goth Dec 4, 2022

@davew @AlexGizis absolutely nothing, i was mad as hell when they killed it and considered it a big nail in the coffin of widespread rss use !

Dave Winer ☕️Dec 4, 2022

@mood @AlexGizis

i think at least half the blame goes to Google Reader which made title-less posts look like errors.

they were real assholes about not supporting all of RSS.

asshole being a technical term for someone who works at a big company who refuses to work with anyone who isn't part of a big company.

garden center goth Dec 4, 2022

@davew @AlexGizis hear hear !! reader was some real extend/embrace/extinguish crap

Dave Winer ☕️Dec 4, 2022

@mood @AlexGizis

exactly!!!

IndieArtisans Dec 3, 2022

@AlexGizis For me it lets me put together specific information from a variety of sources. Say I just wanted to see feeds from potters, I could collect the rss feeds together and see all of their pottery posts in one place.

@AlexGizis @davew Because he invented it.

@AlexGizis @davew Another reason is that rss readers have a notion of read/unread post, an advanced feature that most social apps have been unable to replicate.

@piccolbo @davew that’s because rss articles have headlines that expand to the full thing when you click them. Mastodon and twitter are just little messages the size of headlines so it makes little sense. activitypub has Articles vs Notes, but mastodon just does notes because that’s what they want.

@AlexGizis @piccolbo

RSS specifically allows for posts without titles.

@piccolbo @davew i see that the RSS is nifty for integration: based on this discussion, i just used the Slack RSS integration to send a bunch of the mastodon hashtag rss feeds into a channel where the #speedify marketing people hangout. If we suddenly start trending we’ll know it! [This toot doubles as a test of the system!]

@davew @piccolbo w00t! Thanks Dave, you’ve brought mastodon into my Slack through RSS. Probably not your exact goal, but i still appreciate it!

@davew @piccolbo @AlexGizis dead #sexy

@AlexGizis @davew it may make little sense but it's my number one feature request. I guess i am nonsensical.

@davew @piccolbo What do you think it looks like? a

next to toots the first time you see them? Scroll down and back up and they’re gone?

@AlexGizis @davew Vienna RSS reader offers two options: Mark read using a menu item or toolbar item or mark read after it's in the screen for a while. And i guess there's also mark this and older read menu item. You are correct suggesting that for short messages the action should be quick and minimal. They could disappear or disappear on refresh or display at lower contrast. UI folks may have better ideas.

Aaravchen

@AlexGizis
Telegram has a chat-like mode and a broadcast-follow mode because there is actually demand for it.

With ActivityPub having greater overhead than RSS from the sending server, I'm all for large broadcast-subscribe cases using RSS instead, though it would be good if the Fedi contact details were in the RSS data.
@davew

Rokosun Dec 4, 2022

@AlexGizis
> I have Rss feeds i’d like to import into mastodon, which would seem to make more sense, but isn’t supported

This feature is actually supported by #Friendica, which is a part of the fediverse. You just copy the URL of a website and paste it onto the Friendica search bar, if there is an RSS feed available you can directly follow it from there, and the feed items will appear on your timeline like any other posts. https://trom.tf/social lists out more features of Friendica.

@davew

Social – TROM.tf

Alex Gizis Dec 4, 2022

@futureisfoss @davew yeah, i mentioned that somewhere in these threads. It’s really nice feature… but it’s tough, don’t want to leave mastodon.

IndieArtisans Dec 3, 2022

@davew It looks like it also works with hashtags that you follow: just add .rss to the hashtag link ie: https://mas.to/tags/gardenart.rss for the hashtag GardenArt. Thanks for the heads up!

@indieartisans @davew
Pardon the question: in your example here does this mean that you are only following mentions of that hashtag that occur on the mas.to instance? Or does this automatically grab mentions from the fediverse as well?

IndieArtisans Dec 4, 2022

@samvarma @davew I am not sure... I get the mas.to (that's the instance I'm on) url for all of the hashtags I'm following.

S★m V★rm★Dec 4, 2022

@indieartisans @davew thanks. I suppose a little trial and error will reveal the situation

Piper Carter Dec 3, 2022

@davew thank you

Michael Cervieri Dec 3, 2022

@davew i use it to log my posts to a google sheet

Sir Dr Rusty o the Isle 🖤💛❤️Dec 3, 2022

@davew but but RSS is so 1990s 😂

Fred Lunau Dec 3, 2022

@davew I wish I still knew what RSS was good for - and the bennies you get using it with Mastodon. Any good tutorials to bring us crinkling tech geezers back up to speed would be awesome.

64 mastodonz logistics co-op Dec 3, 2022

@frodo32d @davew RSS is good for syndication. right there in the name! easy for automated systems to collect and redistribute. it doesn’t have immediate human use, it’s all about what it enables machines to do: collect your toots and do stuff with them

Brian Hawthorne Dec 3, 2022

@davew But wouldn’t that just be a read-only version? I’m not getting why people would want to do this.

redheadedfemme Dec 3, 2022

@davew

Well, hell. It worked. I use NewsBlur.

JH Shannon Dec 3, 2022

@davew RSS is an iconic reminder of the open web... the more tools available that will break the limitations of walled garden platforms the better!

Thommy Dec 3, 2022

@davew it also works with tags so someone uninterested in joining masto can still keep tabs on what people are saying about a subject they’re interested in.

Ed 🎡Dec 3, 2022

@thomasjwebb @davew how do you do tags?

Thommy Dec 3, 2022

@davew @boysmithers basically just like users. You add .rss to the end of where you’d normally see the tag, eg https://mastodon.social/tags/synths.rss