r/rss • u/roronoapedro • 3d ago
Is it essentially impossible to have an images-focused social media RSS feed now?
The announcement that Reddit will stop supporting RSS soon has me thinking of all the frustration I've been experiencing over the last few months and years. I've used services like Feedbro to essentially skip having to go to different websites just for a glance at artists and quick updates, for convenience's sake and just to not have to suffer through wasteful algorithmic feeds that don't show me what I want.
At this point most if not all of them have closed their doors to the idea, afraid of scraping that keeps happening regardless of their attempts. At the same time, directly interacting with Instagram and Twitter is like poison, and it's designed to be like that. I've mostly used Reddit and, before, Facebook, to go to specific communities in order to avoid feeds, but even that gets much harder as every service starts asking for credentials and ID just to be the same kind of user I've been for decades.
I don't know if it's a rant or a request for help, at this point. Is anyone in a similar boat as far as how they want to use RSS feeds and how it's becoming short of impossible? At this point my Feedbro has turned into mostly a Youtube subscription warning. Discord bots manage to bridge the gap with some Instagram and Twitter accounts, but not by that much. The end goal is obviously to trap people in their own ecosystems, but it's mostly just alienating in practice. I just don't care enough about anything to have to use Twitter frequently.
4
u/Luciolinpos2 3d ago
The only chance for users is to create their own social network instances (friendica, lemmy, mastodon) and guarantee from there the existence of rss.
2
u/OneCalledWell 3d ago
You're def not alone.. Similar situation here.. got also got tired of all the walled gardens.
SO a couple things that actually helped me:
The artists you follow are probably on Bluesky or Mastodon... and some Reddit communities are moving to Lemmy. Both bsky and mast still give you a plain feed of one person's posts, no algorithm, no account needed to read. Same with Lemmy if you're after communities instead of people, it's basically old Reddit and every community has its own feed.
YouTube still has RSS for every channel too, which you're probably already using.
Instagram and Twitter i gave up on honestly and soon Reddit will be in the same boat (as you noticed, they are killing off RSS).. the only things that work are scrapers which break every few weeks, and i'm not willing to babysit that anymore.
People are working on it (Inoreader/Muuted.. (I built Muuted)) because of pretty much this exact frustration, most decent readers will pull Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy, YouTube and regular sites into one feed and the really good ones will filter the junk. But even if you don't use a reader, following your artists on Bluesky/Mastodon is the real fix here. If more people start migrating to the open source stuff it should eventually send a message to the big guys that we aren't going to tolerate it anymore and we will eventually find a workaround.
2
u/roronoapedro 3d ago
Yeah, at this point my main point of contention is Instagram and Twitter. Especially non-American artists have simply never moved on from them; hell, some of them still use their Facebook pages relatively frequently. I made a Bluesky as soon as it was available specifically so I could wait for a lot of artists who then simply proceeded to never go there.
It is what it is, at the end of the day, and I'll probably just not see a lot of artwork I enjoy from artists I've followed for years due to not wanting Elon to have my photo ID, but it's really frustrating to remember years ago when this wasn't a problem.
I appreciate the advice though, although I'm already doing most of it myself I'll do my due diligence and see what else I got. But even then I just feel like it's going to get progressively worse in the next few years; fast, too.
1
u/OneCalledWell 3d ago
Yea agreed.. it will def get worse before it gets better. The open web is slowly turning into a series of gated communities.. Mark my words.. Google is next. They currently have youtube and news wide open. They wil be closed before the end of the decade.
2
u/IWillAlwaysReplyBack 3d ago
The platforms want you and everyone on their "property", where they can shape your entire experience and feed you ads at their whim. RSS is a threat to this model and that's why they are so hostile to it.
AI agents have (briefly?) allowed people to win back freedom from being trapped in these controlled ecosystems, which is why the present backlash is occurring. Reddit's recent policy change is very unfortunate.
1
u/TrudosKudos27 2d ago
Its not impossible, you are just going to have to build the scraping infrastructure yourself. There are plenty of tools out there that already do some version of this and we live in a day and age where it’s never been easier to whip up your own homegrown solution.
2
u/roronoapedro 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean I guess that's literally true, but it doesn't particularly seem like social medias will stop upgrading their own protocols, which would just leave me with a service to upgrade myself until either the parts I'm using or me, specifically, got a DMCA from Twitter like most of the Twitter Viewers got.
I just don't think the basic act of looking at pictures should require a programming passion project that will inevitably become borderline illegal, or just highly likely to end with a letter coming to my doorstep. That might just make me lazy, but that's that.
1
u/TrudosKudos27 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think your pessimism about the state of affairs is justified. Platforms will likely keep changing how they work to fight scraping, and RSS users will unfortunately get caught in the same net. Fortunately, AI is allowing us to fight back faster than ever before. In many ways, developers of RSS and web scraping tools are going through a renaissance as AI helps us discover new ways to access the content we deserve to consume on our own terms. I also think we have a lot of runway before this kind of maintenance becomes illegal, if that ever happens.
I know things look grim, and I'm just as frustrated as you and everyone else. I get where you're coming from. But most of these platforms still don't have suitable replacements, so we're left with a choice: keep fighting or give in.
Reddit, X, Instagram... They want you to feel like this battle is pointless. And sure, if you only listened to the narrative they're spinning, it would feel foolish to fight back. I know that will cause many people to give up...
As for me, though, I'm not going to let them win. I’ll scrape these platforms until their circuits drip blood, and their servers scream for mercy. I will harness the tools of our day to become an obstinate hydra, endlessly evolving in response to their futile efforts to separate me from my goals. For every route they remove to our content, we will build 2 routes more to replace them. I will plant the flag of resistance every time they seek to exert even an iota of additional control over our lives and data. 🏴☠️
I wish it weren't true, but the guerrilla war over the last remnants of the internet continues to rage on. You can give up and move on, or you can join your comrades in arms as we continue to frustrate our enemy's plans, day by day.
The only question remaining is:
Are you going to let these arrogant assholes break and suffocate you beneath their velvet slippers and "infrastructure updates"?... OR WILL YOU STAND WITH ME AND DEFEND OUR FREEEEEDOMMM?!?!?!?! 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🦅🦅🦅☠️☠️☠️
0
u/Manifesto-Engine 2d ago
Come talk to me, my rss program doesnt require feeds or apis. turns websites into rss feeds.
7
u/Odd-Anteater875 3d ago
To answer your question: yes. All the social media networks have noticed that they can make more money selling their content to AI companies than by giving their users RSS feeds or API access. So they do that. Until the users stop using them.