[HN Gopher] Using RSS to replace social media
___________________________________________________________________
Using RSS to replace social media
Author : Researcherry
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-09-24 18:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lukesmith.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (lukesmith.xyz)
| tofukid wrote:
| I think RSS is a way to read social media, it's not a replacement
| for social media. But that's a good thing! I just want to stay
| updated with blogs, forums, _and_ social media - in one place. I
| built and use https://sumi.news to follow Twitter, newsletters,
| and RSS in a peaceful, chronological feed, and it works well for
| me. I still comment, reply, and interact, but I only have to
| check one website for updates.
| spockz wrote:
| Why? We could have something federated where I add my response
| to a particular post/thread to my RSS feed. We then leave it up
| to the client to generate a proper tree representation of a
| discussion.
| skymt wrote:
| Mastodon uses an HTML microformat called h-feed for
| federation of user feeds. h-feed is based on hAtom, which is
| a microformat encoding of the Atom feed format. So your idea
| isn't all that far off from how the most popular federated
| social network system is designed (though there's more to
| it).
| throwdecro wrote:
| How much of this does an end-user need to think about? It
| seems very complicated.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| It's fascinating to me that even in a post for something as
| simple and mundane as RSS feeds somehow Luke Smith still manages
| to sprinkle in some of his disgusting alt-right vocabulary. I
| have to respect the grift.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Can you please explain what you mean by 'disgusting alt-right
| vocabulary'? After your comment I read his post twice and
| didn't find anything remotely political.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| > Nitter.net is a Twitter proxy that mirrors Twitter, but
| without Javascript soyware and spying.
|
| With "soy" here being an old dogwhistle that refers to the
| "theory" that men are being feminized through the estrogen
| contained in meals that have soy as ingredient.
| smitty1e wrote:
| You are offering significant interpretation here. Note the
| adjaceny if 'o' and 'p' on the QWERTY.
|
| 'Soyware' is possibly a simple 'spyware' typo.
|
| I know neither you nor The Famous Article's author, but
| your remark does not instill confidence in your judgement.
| pcranaway wrote:
| not a typo
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soydev
| voltagex_ wrote:
| It's not a typo, the author also uses this on their
| YouTube channel.
| riffic wrote:
| by definition a dog-whistle. something which can be
| innocently handwaved away by those not attuned, but sends
| a clear signal to those capable of reception.
| [deleted]
| jetstreamSam wrote:
| >disgusting alt-right vocabulary
|
| I am unconvinced that a "dogwhistle" that is a word play on
| spyware is truly disgusting and clearly alt-right. And with
| all due respect, why make a personal snarky attack because
| of 1 word?
| batch12 wrote:
| This is interesting because I passed over the word
| without noticing and even didn't understand even when it
| was pointed out. Now that it has been spelled out for me,
| a word has gone from being unnoticed to communicating the
| idea that the complaint is against. By making a larger
| issue about this, the objection has enabled the idea to
| spread giving the author more reach for his views than he
| originally had.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Because Luke Smith is not shy to express his alt right
| political views both on his website and his YouTube
| channel. As long as he's free to do that, I'm free to
| criticize it.
| jetstreamSam wrote:
| I would completely agree on that, if his general blog
| would be what was posted. But this is an unrelated
| informative article, which is why I don't think
| discrediting critique of the person is valid. Especially
| since the 'offenses' seem impressively minor in this
| case.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I agree that this is an unrelated article, but he opened
| this can of worms himself by inserting dogwhistles in it.
| Which is unfortunate, because the information in there is
| actually useful and something I would gladly link in the
| "Library" section of my blog. But I can't do that now,
| otherwise I'd be platforming speech that wants me dead.
| jetstreamSam wrote:
| Would you care to explain to me how "consooome" and
| "soyware" imply your death?
|
| In my vocabulary those are a joking reference to
| overconsumption and a play on bad software that serves as
| spyware, which social media sites arguably often are imo.
|
| If you argue that you associate these words with people
| that want you dead it would seem to me that that is your
| narrow personal perspective. I certainly don't want you
| dead.
| _dain_ wrote:
| > platforming speech that wants me dead.
|
| can you point to a single instance where luke smith has
| advocated violence, against you or others?
| pixxel wrote:
| Perhaps you're over sensitive or you get a kick out of
| derailing. Either way, time here has been lost to the
| topic.
| spErased wrote:
| I'm not sure what to look for as evidence of Luke
| suggesting he would want yourself or anyone else dead. I
| would appreciate some quotes or the name of a particular
| blog entry for my reference.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Sorry, that was definitely bad wording on my part. But
| still, I think my hesitancy to platform people who openly
| use the vernacular of people who actually _do_ want that
| is reasonable. I obviously don 't know Luke Smith and
| have no idea on what he actually wants, but I know the
| people who use those words and what they want.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Do you have some examples of his alt-right political
| opinions? I've watched a few videos of his that were
| recommended and don't remember anything there.
| jetstreamSam wrote:
| If I remember correctly he's very critical of modern
| society and the modern human living conditions. Very
| disillusioned from big cities and academic institutions.
| Example; "modern man is a slave to his impulses and calls
| it freedom. Previous societies forbid giving into these
| impulses and thus were more free." ~see his blog
|
| To me it seems quite conservative and always well
| explained but never outright alt-right.
| [deleted]
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I think the FAQ (https://web.archive.org/web/201805230342
| 52/http://old.lukesm...) says it all really, especially
| the section where he talks about "the SJWs".
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| After reading I think you are blowing this out of
| proportion by stating that "it says it all". There is a
| section there about his political beliefs and he says his
| main belief is that tech-monopolies should be broken down
| and society should be governed on a smaller scale. I
| think half of HN readers would agree with some version of
| that. And about "the SJWs" - he only says that people are
| asking him to make video about them and he is not going
| to do that.
|
| Maybe I don't know what alt-right is but I don't see how
| this is alt-right. Just because he uses the term "SJW" ?
| I don't use it but I know what it means. You apparently
| do also. That doesn't make us alt-right, right?
| Kaze404 wrote:
| There isn't much alt-right about that specifically, but
| it's clear wording that the alt-right has been using
| online for years. Talking about "SJWs" controlling the
| media and universities (and in the very same paragraph
| saying every "normal" person wants them "gone") and
| calling things you dislike "soy" are both plays in the
| years old alt-right playbook. If it walks like a duck and
| it quacks like a duck...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I have noticed that people commonly referred to as SJW
| often consider everyone who is not them to be alt-right.
|
| And yes, people sharing social justice values do obsess
| over it and it shows.
|
| Anecdotal example: random article brought to me by
| sliding android home screen to the left about new
| Foundation series spent more than half of the volume
| addressing the diversity of the cast and lamenting that
| on-screen sex was showing only heterosexuals.
|
| This can be said about almost any article about any piece
| of media directed to me by Google, from which I do
| conclude that SJWs, indeed, control the media.
|
| (I have no personal experience with the US universities,
| so I can't say anything about them being controlled by
| the SJWs)
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Ah, the blessings of the Google-free Android experience
| get proven once again by this counterexample of Google -
| or rather those working for Google who are in control
| these feeds - pushing their agenda onto unsuspecting
| (...?) victims.
|
| May I suggest removing whatever stock distribution you
| have and replacing it with e.g. LineageOS, doing away
| with Google services - use microG [1] et al if you need
| something which depends on them - and dropping whatever
| "news aggregator" feed is offered by third parties? Use
| something like Nextcloud News [2] and add the feeds for a
| number of publications, both corporate as well as
| alternative, from all sides of the political spectrum.
| Compare how events are reported between them and form
| your own conclusions. Also give up on the hope of non-
| political culture reporting from corporate media, this
| seems to be one of the most heavily politicised areas
| with nearly all publications slanted towards the "left"
| side of the political spectrum.
|
| [1] https://microg.org/
|
| [2] https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news
| fascistusa wrote:
| It does still blow my mind that so much absurd rhetoric
| is coming out of the left over the past decade. The
| absurdity blows my mind and it definitely doesn't promote
| a conversation.
|
| You want a war.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Because the "soy" thing is an overt aspect of alt-right
| and toxic incel discourse.
| jetstreamSam wrote:
| Are jokes on the debated but possible phytoestrogenic
| side effects of soy really exclusively alt right?
| nerdponx wrote:
| No, but the associated cultural memes were born in and
| currently thrive in the overlapping alt-right and toxic
| incel cultures. And Luke Smith openly associates himself
| with the former.
| obtusifolia wrote:
| I think they refer to terms like consoooom and soyware which
| are not political, but can be connected to 4chan and
| therefore to the alt-right. It's a bit of a strech if this is
| the first time you heard of Luke Smith, but generally he's
| not shy to express his political opinions on the far right of
| the spectrum. Which is a shame, because otherwise there's a
| lot I can agree with him on.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| I read the page and did not find anything worth labelling "
| _disgusting alt-right vocabulary_ ". Either put up or shut up
| with the " _disgusting alt-right vocabulary_ " nonsense. This
| type of accusation without examples and explanations just why
| it is " _disgusting_ " and " _alt-right_ " only serves to
| poison the well from which ideas are drawn, it serves no good
| purpose.
|
| So, show us some examples of that disgusting vocabulary so we
| can respond to it. If you can not just keep your fingers off
| the keyboard until you have something constructive to add to
| the discussion.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "unJewgled Chromium"[1] was the first one that came to mind.
| He's normally a little bit more subtle, but I guess he was
| feeling randy that time.
|
| I'm not going to dig further through his blog posts (they're
| insufficiently interesting from a technological perspective;
| mostly longform versions of what someone with only opinions
| from 4chan would write), but you're welcome to.
|
| [1]: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/every-web-browser-
| absolutely-...
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I had a look at one of his Peertube feeds and I see that
| "soy[noun]" is something he uses often enough that it's
| probably not a typo. Example: "climate soyence," "OBS is
| major soyware." All with the soyboy meme guy overlaid. The
| "soy" thing is very much an alt-right dogwhistle, but those
| have a way of leaking out, so it's not always a red flag in
| isolation. I don't think such a charitable read is warranted
| in this case: he's all in on the meme. Put it together with
| all the pepes and whatnot, and it's clear he's at least well
| into the pipeline.
|
| This is why I'm usually against making such accusations
| without extra context. There's _no_ way a casual reader could
| have seen this. If you don 't have that context, it's clearly
| just a typo! So Kaze404 looks like a goofball, unless you
| have context.
|
| edit: more context that removes all doubt
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28653868
| mycoborea wrote:
| It's 2021. Like it or not, what you're describing is common
| slang of internet youth culture.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Edgy antisemitic[0] language (like "unJewgled"), along
| with transphobia, homophobia, and racism, was normal when
| I was an internet youth, too. Then I grew up. I don't
| think he's an internet youth unless I seriously misjudged
| the photo on his website.
|
| [0] https://www.adl.org/spelling
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I did so in another comment on this very thread. And
| unfortunately for you, even if I didn't you don't have the
| power to stop me from saying it. Maybe next time read the
| rest of the thread before commenting.
| qersist3nce wrote:
| Well, at least most of the blogs on self-hosted freedom-of-
| expression-respecting solutions I read over the net are written
| by boogeyman "alt-rights" and "4channers", unlike the so called
| "liberal" ilk that are bowing day and night to big media.
|
| I have my criticisms on Luke Smith, but as a fellow man, I
| respect him.
| Zash wrote:
| Forgotten OStatus have we? That was essentially RSS feeds +
| optional extras like ActivityStreams and push, all gracefully
| degrading into plain ol' RSS / Atom feeds.
| cxr wrote:
| Along with Atom, RSS is simple enough (it's in the name) that
| you can add RSS support even for static sites. ActivityPub, the
| most popular carrier for ActivityStreams, is "designed around
| the concept of an inbox and outbox"
| <https://lwn.net/Articles/741218/>, requiring that the server
| itself provide support. If you know of a realistic
| demonstration of ActivityStreams-without-ActivityPub that
| establishes a pattern that can be appropriated for re-use
| elsewhere (e.g. on static sites), then ActivityStreams is worth
| discussing, but otherwise probably not.
|
| It's my claim that for all the work that goes into Mastodon,
| Solid, etc, none of them will truly succeed without the ability
| for programmers themselves to effectively put them into
| practice on static sites, especially those associated with
| their GitHub profile using GitHub Pages. (I despise GitHub,
| FWIW, and really hate that so much of the world of development
| has settled there, but I can know what I know from seeing what
| I see.) When it's simple enough to do that, that's the point
| where non-niche productized services for non-programmers to do
| the same will start popping up and off-Twitter chatter will
| take off. Despite the inroads that Mastodon has made, I don't
| consider in non-niche; it's being held back by the same factors
| described here.
| Zash wrote:
| ActivityStreams was originally an XML extension for Atom
| <https://activitystrea.ms/specs/atom/1.0/>. It worked just
| fine with a static site.
|
| https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ formerly PubSubHubbub was used
| to notify subscribers, but it was optional and subscribers
| would fall back to polling. WebSub could be a separate
| service.
|
| The trickiest part is handling replies, which involves some
| cryptography to prevent spoofing. But this too could be done
| by polling, only then you only get replies from those you
| subscribe to. ActivityPub does this with crypto too IIRC.
| pacman2 wrote:
| For Twitter I use this Bridge to get RSS
|
| https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge
|
| Just saw, it works also with other websites like youtube. But I
| have never tried this.
| HaloZero wrote:
| Has anybody used rss-bridge to replace the Facebook newsfeed? It
| seems like you have to point to individual people so I'm curious
| if you'd get blocked if you tried to follow more than a few
| friends.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Technical correction: YouTube, GitHub and GitLab all produce Atom
| feeds, not RSS. (Nitter has /rss in its URLs but I can't confirm
| they're _actually_ RSS because the feeds seem to be broken,
| producing HTML "user not found" error pages.)
|
| (If you want to know more of my beef against RSS (both as a
| technology and as a term for web feeds regardless of actual
| format):
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=chrismorgan+atom+rss&type=comm....
| RSS should have been killed off about fifteen years ago in favour
| of Atom.)
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm curious, why do you think it should have been killed off in
| favor of Atom? Do you mean in the sense of the terminology, or
| is there something inferior about RSS?
|
| Perhaps both should be killed off in favor of a JSON-based
| format.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Refer to my earlier comments: Atom is technically superior
| and more sound, and calling them all "RSS" is harmful by
| encouraging the inferior.
|
| JSON stuff? Eh, I feel that's largely a solution looking for
| a problem. It's too late to get universal support in clients
| (feeds aren't popular enough and too much of the software
| basically on life support), so you're always going to need to
| serve Atom or RSS as well, and once you're implementing one
| of _them_ , why would you bother with the JSON format at all?
| As for the one serious attempt, JSON Feed, I have one thing
| that I really like about it and one thing that I don't. The
| don't: it specifies that titles are plain text, which I think
| is a shame; Atom lets you put HTML in your titles so you can
| do things like <code>, <em>, <sup> and so forth (and I do, oh
| yes! I do)--though I wish Atom had let you specify _both_
| plain text and HTML ( _sometimes_ I want <code></code> to
| "degrade" to backticks; refer to the titles of my last few
| blog posts for examples, with plain text in the <title> and
| HTML in the body). And that's the thing I think JSON Feed got
| right for the _content_ , that you can provide both HTML
| _and_ text, whereas Atom forces you to choose.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > JSON stuff? Eh, I feel that's largely a solution looking
| for a problem.
|
| Before I say anything else, your viewpoint is totally
| valid. :) I can't truly argue against it in an objective
| sense, I think.
|
| It's funny that you say that, however, because that's my
| perspective on XML in general; it's a solution looking for
| a problem. Sure, we have Atom, it's here, let's just use
| it, and I kind of agree. Yet if Atom has already been in a
| sort of decline, if you will, the complexity it adds only
| detracts from any sort of resurgence in adoption. The
| entire syntax is designed to support _types_ , which as far
| as I've seen is something that has never really been used.
| I mean, whose feed actually uses custom XML
| namespaces/tags? Feeds are these verbose and overly-
| abstract markup files for a purpose nobody really asked
| for. If someone needs to stick more metadata into their
| feed, they can already do it with JSON by just adding a
| non-standard key to the object. Done. No need to have
| anything beyond primitive types or declaring namespaces.
|
| As far as the HTML thing goes, that's a fair point, but I
| have to disagree. I _don 't_ want HTML to taint titles of
| things in a feed reader. It's bad enough that people can
| use emojis and different stylized unicode characters in
| them, but HTML would just make things worse. I don't need
| titles to have bold or italics or colors or whatnot. If
| that's going to be in the actual content body, then so be
| it, but what you are suggesting sounds like a horrible
| idea. Granted, I didn't have that problem back when I used
| to use a feed reader.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > calling them all "RSS" is harmful by encouraging the
| inferior.
|
| Where did this come from? You refer to an atom feed as RSS,
| someone decides to add RSS to their site, and they
| implement atom because that's how you do RSS. What's the
| problem?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > Perhaps both should be killed off in favor of a JSON-based
| format.
|
| As long as XML has DTD and Schema, it will be superior to
| JSON
| leephillips wrote:
| RSS seems to have taken over as a generic term encompassing
| both actual RSS and the superior Atom.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| > RSS-bridge is the ultimate RSS feed helper and will not just
| give you RSS feeds for Facebook pages, but basically anything
| else.
|
| This has been my opposite experience, all RSS bridges i have
| tried gets error with Facebook pages.
| jsilence wrote:
| I share this experience. Frustrating. But made me give up on FB
| completely. For good.
| spansoa wrote:
| _Uses this for Miniflux_
|
| https://miniflux.app/
| poopsmithe wrote:
| I've been enjoying using https://fraidyc.at/ for the past year or
| so. It ingests RSS and is smart enough for everything else. I use
| it to follow people on Twitter, know when a favorite youtuber
| uploads a video, subscribe to a number of blogs, and know exactly
| when a new post is added to the subreddits I frequent.
| [deleted]
| hnaccy wrote:
| I use social media because it's social.
|
| A one way rss feed of content is the complete opposite.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| You could import the RSS feed into a tool which allows you to
| comment to specific entries with your comments being served
| through RSS to interested others...
|
| ...upon which you'd have re-invented something resembling
| Mastodon, GNU Social or XMPP, give or take few bits.
| Ambolia wrote:
| The bad thing about Mastodon is that you don't own your
| handle and your data unless you run your own instance.
|
| Maybe it could have a crytographic addon where you own handle
| and data cryptographically and can move it to a new server as
| long as you keep a backup locally and the private key.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Maybe you could but there is something to be said for
| running your own instance of whatever platform you use to
| spread your thoughts. It is close to the last word in
| avoiding censorship as long as the network operators remain
| (or become in the case of AWS and probably some others)
| neutral. As to whether this is scalable... remains to be
| seen but for "normal" people with a few thousand
| "followers" at best it should work fine even on a single
| board computer like a Raspberry Pi. That same SBC could
| host your mail - using a smart host (which could be run as
| a service) to push mail to the world so as to avoid an
| avalanche of spam. While it is doing its thing anyway you
| may as well add whatever web-related thing you might want
| to put out for the world to see, or maybe not for the world
| but at least for family and friends. It can host media
| services, a VPN service, etc. In short, it can be a
| stepping stone towards a decentralised net - which I deem
| to be a good thing.
| yur3i__ wrote:
| The issue with these solutions is that they're only really one
| way, if I actually want to interact with anything posted to the
| RSS feed I have to navigate to the main website anyway, which
| renders the initial reading of them in a freer way pretty
| pointless.
| illegalmemory wrote:
| I agree, but that is beautiful right? The choice is in user's
| hand if they want to interact with content or not. If they
| don't want to read the content from that publisher in future
| they can simply do that, rather than getting three drip mails
| in 2 week intervals on why I haven't read emails sent to me by
| them.
| piggybox wrote:
| Since you mention choice, then this is just an option rather
| than a replacement. If it's a replacement then it takes away
| the option to interact with content (such as commenting).
| 0xabe wrote:
| If you want to interact, the way you do that is to own your own
| blog where you post your "reply" and use a trackback[0] url.
| Then the conversation is even freer and you're in control of
| your content. Don't forget to create your own RSS feed for
| others.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
| karatinversion wrote:
| This is another way of achieving the same end, yes. Like any
| such solution, it requires both author and commenter to use
| software supporting it, which Twitter does not.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I've thought about how RSS and social media relate to each other
| _a lot_. Social media works off the "feed" paradigm pretty
| explicitly (News Feed, Twitter feed, etc.).
|
| I've thought about how to implement an open-standards social
| media site. Maybe with a feed server (FastCGI or otherwise) that
| takes authentication tokens in the request header or URL (over
| HTTPS only obviously), and - if the token is linked to a valid
| "friend" or "following" relationship, returns an RSS feed of the
| person's recent posts.
| est wrote:
| Twitter with an RSS feed is a waste of crawling traffic.
|
| Suppose you follow 1k accounts, you have to subscribe 1k RSS.
| What a waste. Twitter's core functionality was based on how to
| aggregate all 1k updates into one feed.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Replacing existing approaches to social media needs a two way
| protocol like activitypub https://activitypub.rocks/
|
| RSS plays well but is not sufficient
| riffic wrote:
| to add on top of this, we *really* need players like media,
| institutions, and government to start adopting ActivityPub and
| to have those groups start spinning up sites which pump out
| communication onto this system.
|
| This could look like a WordPress blog with the ActivityPub
| plugin installed.
|
| It could also look like the incumbent social media services
| white-labeling their websites so orgs can be social from their
| own domains.
|
| Groups I'm talking about are your newspapers, cable news
| channels, fire departments, colleges, heads of state, et
| cetera.
| kugutsumen wrote:
| I use Reeder to follow the sites I enjoy reading e.g. slashdot,
| ars technica, xkcd, swift and golang blogs, some sections of the
| NY Times, etc.
|
| I never read social media feed. For Twitter my Tweetbot client is
| configured to filter out all retweets and I use a 'mustered' list
| for the people whose tweets I don't want to miss.
| Ambolia wrote:
| The difficult part is replacing the comment section and the
| network dynamics that make those sites grow.
|
| I think all alternatives to youtube fail because of the dead
| comment sections. Not sure if there would be some way of creating
| distributed comment sections without them turning into pure spam
| and . Maybe chains of trust where you only see messages by users
| that have been "whitelisted" by someone you trust.
| edoceo wrote:
| Signed ActivityPub?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'll post this every time someone tries to launder Luke Smith
| through HN: he is a reactionary with a relatively popular YouTube
| channel in which he openly espouses and trades in racist talking
| points[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA
| tasuki wrote:
| That's... bad, and also totally orthogonal to the linked blog
| post?
|
| Should we not be using RSS to replace social media because the
| person saying so might be a racist? Should racists be silenced
| when talking about other things?
| woodruffw wrote:
| > That's... bad, and also totally orthogonal to the linked
| blog post?
|
| The linked blog post is the kind of informational pablum that
| anybody with a handful of years of programming or IT
| experience could write.
|
| That's what Luke Smith specializes in: milquetoast
| technological advice wrapped in a veneer of alt-right
| language designed to titillate his audience. I see no reason
| why we should give him center stage in our attentions when
| plenty of other, better, and more qualified people can talk
| cogently about the same topics.
| jsilence wrote:
| > when plenty of other, better, and more qualified people
| can talk cogently about the same topics
|
| You mean Brodie?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't know who that is.
| jsilence wrote:
| Brodie Robertson is one of the Linux Protonerds on YT
| worth watching.
| jsilence wrote:
| Yeah we know. Does not keep me from cloning his st config. But
| yes, I liked watching his stuff much more when he was going
| thru his Linux/Dektop setup or advocating useful but little
| known command line tools.
|
| Not unlike Scott Adams. I find Dilbert funny. Am I supposed not
| to laugh because his political views do not align with mine (at
| all)?
| woodruffw wrote:
| You can do whatever you please!
|
| Not everybody knows, because he's a relative nobody who
| occasionally gets laundered through HN. My only role in this
| entire thing is making sure that the bits that I know are
| available for consideration.
| jsilence wrote:
| He does not seem to be a complete mindless dummy. Ever
| tried to contact and argue with him? I'd honestly watch
| that.
|
| Same thing with Jordan Peterson. I must not agree with his
| stand points and positions, but his arguments are
| compelling at times and it is fun watching and following
| his stuff. I can only broaden my view if don't look into
| the same direction all the time.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Both Peterson and Smith's content falls squarely into the
| tarpit of bullshit asymmetry: anything that they chose to
| mouth off on takes an asymmetrically large amount of
| effort to rebut. That's not how I'd prefer to spend my
| time, and it's not something I can reasonably ask any
| person to do.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _takes an asymmetrically large amount of effort to
| rebut_
|
| And so... you'd rather just badmouth him on HN instead?
| This entire subthread is an ad hominem, and entirely
| inappropriate.
| piggybox wrote:
| Thanks! I, for one, have never heard of this person.
| _dain_ wrote:
| get over it
| olah_1 wrote:
| Thank you for reporting this, comrade.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Accusing your critics of being communists is a famously
| strong argument against being a reactionary, as all of modern
| history has shown!
| abnry wrote:
| "This guy's racist"
|
| "Ok commie"
|
| About right for the level of discourse.
|
| This is the comments section of a post about RSS.
| olah_1 wrote:
| There is no critique here other than "reported for wrong
| think".
| woodruffw wrote:
| You do realize that this is an Internet forum and that
| nobody has been reported, right?
|
| It's incredible how we've descended from "someone pointed
| out that the author of TFA is a reactionary" to
| breathless analogies.
| olah_1 wrote:
| That guy knows exactly what he's doing. He's hoping that
| more of the hivemind jumps on Luke and tries to further
| punish him for his dissent from the global technocracy.
|
| Comply or face the consequences. No doubt that guy
| believes he's a true individual lol.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm the same guy.
|
| I'm not particularly old, but I _am_ old enough to
| remember when it was possible for someone to be Unpopular
| On The Internet (for good or bad reasons) without it
| being a matter of grave political importance (
| "hivemind", "punish", "dissent").
|
| In other words: you're overplaying your hand. If you like
| what Luke has to say, just say that. Behaving as if my
| _dislike_ somehow amounts to oppression is childish.
| debarshri wrote:
| Social media tells you what you should see based on some implicit
| determination. Sure sometimes you can discover new things that
| did not interest you. You can feel serendipitous. With RSS feed,
| you can actually gain control, you could actually say when you
| see items in the feed, alert me. With current social media, I am
| constantly discovering things, which gives me a short high of
| finding new things which lasts for few minutes and then I find
| another new thing. I haven't been able to find what interests me
| for eg. In YouTube, where I get bored quickly even though I keep
| seeing new things, new domain I just discovered.
| ravenstine wrote:
| YouTube is far better if you can completely bypass their
| algorithm.
|
| Half the time I use YouTube through NewPipe, a FOSS Android
| alternative to the YouTube app. If you import your
| subscriptions, it shows you _exactly_ all the videos from your
| subscribed channels in chronological order, not what it or
| YouTube _thinks_ you want to see. The search is seemingly less
| algorithmically influenced and there is no autoplay. There 's a
| "trending" tab, but that's easy to ignore and you can just set
| your subscription feed as the default tab. The very fact that I
| don't feel like what I'm seeing is what corporations and
| billionaires want me to see changes my usage into something
| that is _active_ rather than _passive_. It feels different,
| better, to participate in the power process to not only have
| confidence in that I 'm seeing all the updates I specified to
| see but that I have to seek out what I want to watch/listen to.
| Psychologically, it's healthier, IMO.
| atatatat wrote:
| Peep the settings, you can remove the Trending tab
| altogether.
| crtasm wrote:
| Newpipe is fantastic.
|
| > there is no autoplay.
|
| There is now, it got turned on when I installed a recent
| update. The option is: settings->video and audio->auto-queue
| next stream.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| YouTube itself does have that same option under the
| subscriptions tab, it will only show videos from your
| subscriptions in chronological order.
| ravenstine wrote:
| That is true, except YouTube doesn't always show you all
| your subscription content. In fact it frequently hides
| subscribed content from me, including live streams, even
| when I set the bell-icon to "All". The difference between
| the subscriptions tab on YouTube and NewPipe is that the
| latter literally scans every subscribed channel for
| uploaded content, so I have yet to find out that I've ever
| missed something through it. Whereas on YouTube I often
| discover that I missed out on either a live stream or an
| upload that did actually interest me but it never appeared
| in either my notifications or in the Subscriptions tab. The
| subscriptions tab _is_ better than anything that 's on the
| home page, but I prefer to not have an algorithm lie to me
| that I can see "All" new uploads.
|
| EDIT: Also, random semi-related complaint; YouTube on web
| _never_ honors when I click "Set Reminder". It doesn't
| matter if I permanently allow notifications in my browser
| or what. I get no emails either. I have a hard time
| believing the YT devs have written any tests for it. Then
| again, I've never tried it in Chrome. !_!
| kgwxd wrote:
| YouTube has rss.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Serendipity is sadly an endangered experience with today's
| popularity algorithms. If every suggestion you see is based on
| what you and people with similar behavior as you are most
| likely to click, then what you get is a rut. The things you
| discover may be things you haven't seen before, but they can
| hardly be called new.
|
| The beautiful thing about flipping through a magazine, or
| browsing a library, is that everyone gets the same options
| regardless of who they are. It allows me, someone who isn't
| into a particular thing, to discover that thing. To
| accidentally read something I wouldn't have thought I agreed
| with, and discover that they actually made a decent point.
|
| I think these types of popularity algorithms are deeply
| problematic.
| grujicd wrote:
| I'm doing it the other way, using social media instead of RSS!
| Ok, only half joking.
|
| Facebook is now what RSS was supposed to be, but for the non-tech
| masses. Sure, I still use RSS for tech blogs, but how do I find
| about local concerts and events, schedule changes for kid's
| aikido, etc? All these small organizations, clubs, bands,
| artists, venues use Facebook as a way to notify their
| members/fans.
|
| After some curating, I really like my Facebook. But I don't use
| it as a social network, i.e. there's not much social stuff there.
| "Loud" friends or relatives they are muted. But that's where I
| find out about next concert of bands I follow, which I wouldn't
| find elsewhere.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Twitter is especially good for RSS as you can see almost all 140
| chars in a single line and see all the recents tweets for the
| twitter account. I've no interest in comments in twitter.
|
| With Reddit you can subscribe to RSS feeds of subreddits and see
| the new topics. Click through to reddit if you want to engage.
|
| It has its uses and frankly it's my method for info consumption.
| If something doesn't have an RSS interface then I don't use it.
| Life is too short.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Twitter is especially good for RSS as you can see almost all
| 140 chars in a single line and see all the recents tweets for
| the twitter account._
|
| Twitter used to have RSS (Atom?) until March 2013.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Any suggestion for a good HTML scraper that generates RSS
| feeds from Twitter profiles without relying in the API or
| third-party services?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The RSS service I use has a Twitter gateway which does
| translation. It works really nice.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| What RSS service you're using? I'm in the market.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| INO Reader - think Google Reader. Good deals around
| Thgiv.
| navmed wrote:
| Is there one for Instagram?
| smsm42 wrote:
| I hope RSS is finally old enough to be in fashion again, and
| people are starting to wake up to the fact that it's much
| superior to social media as a periodic content consumption venue.
| Social media is for posting cat pictures, wedding invitations and
| ancient jokes you heard for the first time yesterday. RSS is for
| creating curated periodic content streams. I've been using it
| since forever, and there's never been anything better. Well,
| maybe better format - RSS, Atom, whatever - but the idea is the
| same.
|
| Hopefully people start to wake up to this finally? One can hope.
| [deleted]
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