The biggest issue with RSS in my eyes is that it tries to replace the Web instead of just being a better way of viewing the Web. The info RSS provides should be extracted out of the HTML itself by your Web browser, not a separate document provided by the content creator. It should be like a cross between Bookmarks and ReaderView on steroids. Leaving it up to the content creator just makes adoption much harder than it needs to be and is a large part of the reason why the semantic web never really went anywhere.
But as long as browser manufacturers don't really care, I don't see much chance of anything changing. Bookmarks haven't changed one bit in 25 years, despite offering so much potential for improvement. And it's not just Google's fault either, even Firefox removed that little bit of RSS integration that they had some years ago, when they really should have done the opposite and made it more useful and flexible.
I agree about the "replacing the web" observation, however I think the nostalgia is warranted in that it's people splitting hairs between the lesser of two evils.
While RSS replaced web sites (particularly aesthetically), they are less nefarious than social media companies and search companies whose only goal is to use the content of others to sell ads and their own products.
One of the indieweb approaches to feeds is to just structure the HTML sufficiently, and not have separate feed files. This works pretty well, and some feed readers work with it. Some info is at https://indieweb.org/h-entry
But as long as browser manufacturers don't really care, I don't see much chance of anything changing. Bookmarks haven't changed one bit in 25 years, despite offering so much potential for improvement. And it's not just Google's fault either, even Firefox removed that little bit of RSS integration that they had some years ago, when they really should have done the opposite and made it more useful and flexible.