RSS doesn't need to solve this problem. If you decide you care enough about a given community you can make an account on that instance and go do it the regular way.
The problem RSS solves is it prevents your whole world being captured by a particular community, instance, server, platform, company, whatever. Half the Internet is having an existential crisis over the Reddit implosion. RSS users aren't - we're kind of shrugging our shoulders and saying, well that's one of 10 places we get community, info, whatever, sure it's a big one but if it vanished overnight (which it sort of did) 85% of my feed would still be there.
Reddit, Lemmies, blogs, podcasts, Mastodon instances, weird alt Tube sites, the Chans, the Tildes, SDF, probably more - contrary to recent HN posts about how all the web feels "samey" now, it's a big 'net out there these days. It's merely a question of the company you keep. If you only ate at chain restaurants, you'd feel that food has gotten pretty lame too.
Until it does it's not an alternative to SOCIAL networks
> If you decide you care enough about a given community
What if I don't have time to evaluate the whole community and just decide that I care enough about a given piece of content and want to add my very valuable contribution by upvoting?
> whole world being captured by a particular community, instance, server...
This is a nonexisting problem since there are many of those, so
> one of 10 places we get community, info ... 85% of my feed would still be there
this comparison doesn't make sense, if you only used Reddit for 15% of you news/ consumption, didn't care about it (didn't have any social capital there etc.) or other users, you'd also not have any existential crisis regardless of whether you used RSS or something else to read Reddit/other sources
> Until it does it's not an alternative to SOCIAL networks
I get what you’re saying butI think this doesn’t matter quite as much as it does with Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Plenty of us preferred when Reddit was less like a modern social media network (mostly the pitfalls) and are more than happy just lurking. I don’t need an online status light. I don’t want some weird “snoovatar” NFT nonsense. I want /r/videography so I can continue to learn about my craft. An RSS feed sounds great and I’m kind of annoyed at myself for no thinking of it already lol.
I don't get the broader point you're trying to make here. That RSS is no good because it doesn't provide some kind of unified ID, posting/commenting capabilities etc.?
It's well documented that 95% of users are lurkers. 95% of the time I'm lurking, too. That's why following multiple communities across multiple platforms is useful. For the frequent times when we all lurk.
The broader point is pretty simple - you suggestion fails in the relevant problem domain, which is social networks
> It's well documented that 95% of users are lurkers
then you wouldn't mind citing a source? Though bear in mind that in this context lurker is a social media platform user who:
a) reads but
b) never interacts (no likes, no shares, no comments, no posts, no messages, no games etc.)
> weird alt tube sites
What does this look like for you? I've failed to migrate any of my video consumption off YouTube due to lack of discoverability. (I know you can sub to yt channels via rss too but I'd like to do that less ideally to de-silo my video sources)
Discoverability is rather hard, not all YTers will announce their alt channels. I’ve found the most luck with LBRY/Odysee, especially STEM channels, and they even have a plugin for this[0]. However I haven’t tested it personally.
I also suggest using Invidious for getting YT RSS feeds, its incredibly simple and a much cleaner (and more private) experience all around.
The problem RSS solves is it prevents your whole world being captured by a particular community, instance, server, platform, company, whatever. Half the Internet is having an existential crisis over the Reddit implosion. RSS users aren't - we're kind of shrugging our shoulders and saying, well that's one of 10 places we get community, info, whatever, sure it's a big one but if it vanished overnight (which it sort of did) 85% of my feed would still be there.
Reddit, Lemmies, blogs, podcasts, Mastodon instances, weird alt Tube sites, the Chans, the Tildes, SDF, probably more - contrary to recent HN posts about how all the web feels "samey" now, it's a big 'net out there these days. It's merely a question of the company you keep. If you only ate at chain restaurants, you'd feel that food has gotten pretty lame too.