Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.
Here’s how to use #RSS.
But the explosion in newsletters is overwhelming as a reader. Instead of one paper with a dozen writers, you’ve got a dozen newsletters scattered across your inbox.
What if you could curate your own custom newspaper? All your favorite writers, no spam, no surveillance.
Although I regularly read about “the death of RSS”, RSS is still alive and well, and I’ve been using it for more than a decade. Here’s how you can too.
1. Choose an RSS reader. I use Inoreader, but there are a bunch of options out there (free and paid, mobile/web/desktop). Switching between them is pretty easy, so you don’t have to agonize over this too much.
2. Add your sites. Try searching for feeds on the newsletters/blogs/websites you read the most (like Citation Needed!) You can even put in YouTube channels, or Mastodon or BlueSky feeds.
If you need ideas, I publish some of my blogroll: https://mollywhite.net/blogroll/
for several years now, Google has been doing their best to hide RSS feeds for Youtube – most of the feed readers usually workaround it by finding the feed for the videos playlist of the channel:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=<channel-ID-not-channel-name>
easier when you have the reader find it for you than trying to find it yourself 🫤
Molly White
Monospace Mentor
cerement