[HN Gopher] Every Mastodon User Has an RSS Feed
___________________________________________________________________
Every Mastodon User Has an RSS Feed
Author : mrzool
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-06-24 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rssboard.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rssboard.org)
| alwillis wrote:
| Follow a hashtag on Mastodon also creates an RSS feed you can
| subscribe to.
|
| For example, if you're on mastodon.social and follow the #a11y
| hashtag, you can subscribe to mastodon.social/tags/a11y.rss
|
| Very handy.
| superkuh wrote:
| And it's a good thing too since post version 3 mastadon instances
| do not serve HTML text or images. It's all just a javascript
| application. The RSS feed is the only way to actually access the
| text of posts without executing an arbitrary application. It'd be
| nice if there was a "nitter" for twitter but for mastadon(s).
| jwilk wrote:
| You may want to give my CLI a try:
|
| https://github.com/jwilk/zygolophodon
| Hakkin wrote:
| It seems odd to make some distinction between HTML or RSS and a
| JSON endpoint. If anything, the JSON endpoint is actually more
| human readable than the HTML or RSS output, you just have an
| "arbitrary application" that happens to understand HTML and RSS
| to display it to you. All of them contain the exact same data,
| just represented in different ways.
|
| For reference, here's the JSON endpoint for the same account as
| listed in the article:
| https://mastodon.online/api/v1/accounts/109298336948075673/s...
|
| Firefox has a nice UI for browsing JSON, but Chrome will just
| give you a text dump. Ironically, Firefox also used to have a
| nice UI for browsing RSS feeds but they removed it awhile ago.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| HTML and RSS adds semantic for the HATEOS part of the ReST-
| ful web. JSON not so much.
|
| Your comment could just as well have said SGML or XML instead
| of JSON which would make the distinction more obvious.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The underlying ActivityPub endpoints use JSON-LD, which is
| much more HATEOAS than plain the JSON shown in the link
| above.
|
| If you send an HTTP request with an header of 'Accept:
| application/activity+json' you get proper _machine-
| readable_ data out.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| Indeed much more applicable then, I stand corrected
|
| Given the context I assumed the regular unspecified
| internal type of JSON commonly used to back SPAs
| fab23 wrote:
| In Firefox use the RSSPreview [1] add-on to get the RSS feed
| rendering back.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/rsspreview/
| Reventlov wrote:
| It's spelled mastodon.
| Andrex wrote:
| I'll bring it up as many times as is necessary: it's
| disgraceful that Mastodon forces JavaScript to be enabled for
| viewing (not even usage).
| aendruk wrote:
| Disgraceful is pretty strong but I'll support absurd. Imagine
| if every book was delivered as a bespoke inkjet printer.
| realitythreek wrote:
| Practically the entire web forces JavaScript to be enabled. I
| used to be pretty irate about it but that was 10 years ago
| and I'm tired.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Modern web browsers are JavaScript engines that also render
| stuff. I understood the resistance to running JavaScript 20
| years ago, but today, I rank that up there with buying a cell
| phone but refusing to run 3rd-party apps. The web _is_
| JavaScript now.
| Andrex wrote:
| I have JavaScript disabled by default and enable it on my
| bookmarks and when necessary on random new websites I visit.
|
| I have no problem turning on JS for a web app. I understand
| Google Maps just couldn't really work how it's expected to
| without JS. Same for web email clients, or games, or office
| suits.
|
| But if your "app" is just a progressively-enhanced list of
| posts (e.g., a blog), there is no justification for forced JS
| usage. Sorry Mastodon.
|
| Running JS is a privilege for those with the computing power
| (or battery capacity) to spare, and turns the browser into
| the biggest risk vector on whatever machine that browser is
| installed on.
| berkes wrote:
| Mastodon (with an o, an often made mistake) has an API, which
| most alternatives (pleroma, gotosocial etc) also implement,
| partly. Several frontends, including extremely lightweight
| clients exist for this API.
|
| Mastodon furthermore implements the whole server-server
| ActivityPub standard, which can be used for some actions, like
| following someone, just fine. This is a very well described
| standard.
|
| Mastodon doesn't implement ActivityPub server-client standard,
| instead it has the aforementioned selfbrewn "rest" API. Which,
| IMO is a shame, and has caused all clients (mobile, web, etc)
| to rely on this nonstandard API.
|
| Edit: the point being:there are several ways to get content
| from Mastodon, depending on usecase and needs. You really don't
| need to scrape or parse or load the JS client.
| nathants wrote:
| every github branch has an rss feed too!
| veave wrote:
| Every twitter user also has an rss feed...
| https://nitter.net/twitter/rss
| mrzool wrote:
| I was so happy to see that Nitter kept working after they
| killed the API. Now I use their RSS feeds to keep up with my
| favorite accounts since I'm not on Twitter that much anymore.
| veave wrote:
| They did? I still use the API 1.1 and it works fine for
| retrieving timelines and posting which is all I need to do.
| mrzool wrote:
| I thought they did when they cut off 3rd party apps and
| removed the docs, but I might be mistaken.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Lists don't, though. It is easy enough to get that going if you
| use the API (which I did, obviously), and feels like something
| the platform could easily add.
|
| (I consume a couple of my lists almost exclusively via RSS, and
| the result is a bit like following a couple of curated news
| sites)
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| Does not seem to be the case for users on instances that use
| Akkoma or Pleroma, and probably other non-mastodon frontends.
| E.g. https://social.kernel.org/torvalds.rss
| v64 wrote:
| The URLs are a bit different with those systems.
| https://social.kernel.org/users/torvalds.rss works (and
| redirects to
| https://social.kernel.org/users/torvalds/feed.atom).
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out to me, I'm sure I'm not the only
| one who didn't know this. I recently wanted to import my own
| Akkoma RSS feed into my website, and I tried searching around
| the Akkoma documentation and didn't see any mentions of
| feeds.
| kevincox wrote:
| Your URL is slightly off. If your feed reader supports auto-
| discovery (most do) you can just paste in
| https://social.kernel.org/torvalds (the HTML UI) and it will
| find the feed for you.
| kibwen wrote:
| Note that every subreddit and every Youtube channel is also an
| RSS feed. I have to imagine that some rogue engineeers snuck that
| functionality in over a decade ago and that it's simply escaped
| the notice of any PMs or bean counters since then.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Shh! Don't tell them!
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| When youtube and reddit started almost every website had an rss
| feed, so I doubt anyone had to sneak it in.
| the-printer wrote:
| Ah, but the parent comment does so much to fuel the narrative
| of conflict that makes places like the Fediverse so appealing
| to some.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Yep. This is how I follow people on youtube. So much more
| convenient.
| latexr wrote:
| Every YouTube playlist has an RSS feed too. Unfortunately they
| always show the top fifteen items and there's seemingly no way
| to reverse that, making the feeds useless when creators add new
| episodes to the bottom of the playlist instead of the top
| (which is fairly common).
| politelemon wrote:
| Very interesting to learn this, and sad to know at the same
| time that it could probably rot and degrade over time. I wonder
| if YouTube clients like newpipe use those RSS feeds.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > I have to imagine that some rogue engineeers snuck that
| functionality in over a decade ago and that it's simply escaped
| the notice of any PMs or bean counters since then.
|
| Nothing really rouge about it. Google was big on RSS initially
| as a way to subscribe to content across the web. They had their
| own RSS Reader after all.
|
| Yet, Chrome added an experimental "Follow" feature in 2021 for
| RSS subscriptions [1]. Edge did the same calling it "Follow
| Creators" that mostly focuses on YouTube but also uses RSS [2].
|
| [1] https://blog.chromium.org/2021/05/an-experiment-in-
| helping-u...
|
| [2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/17/22887626/microsoft-
| edge-y...
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Thank you SO MUCH for pointing this out: I never knew about
| YouTube being a feed. I will make a YouTube video demonstrating
| this so those who use RSS readers will be able to monitor my
| channel.
| kagevf wrote:
| So does every HN user
|
| https://hnrss.github.io/#user-feeds
|
| Edit: it's 3rd party, though . . .
| remram wrote:
| That's third-party.
| the-printer wrote:
| Not sure why this is getting downvoted because this is the best
| way to browse HN in my opinion.
| joshu wrote:
| i don't think rss comes close to scaling. every single subscriber
| will poll every single thing every 30 minutes (or whatever). this
| was a crushing amount of traffic 20 years ago when the web was
| much, much smaller...
| gmu3 wrote:
| Every single reader app not every subscriber and not everyone
| hosts their own reader.
| aendruk wrote:
| Remember when this was a standard feature of social websites?
|
| _If you want to read a person 's updates without signing up for
| Twitter, or without visiting the site, just use the rss feed to
| subscribe. If your page is public, any one with a feed reader can
| subscribe to your feed and see your latest updates in their feed
| reader, even if they don't have a Twitter account. The feed
| contains the information you see on the page, but in a special
| format for easy aggregation._ (2011)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110228080118/http://support.tw...
|
| _A news aggregator is the best way to keep track of all the
| feeds you care about. Facebook will generate an RSS Feed that you
| can save to your bookmarks folder and view in your browser. You
| will now have an auto-updating RSS Feed that alerts you of
| important things on Facebook involving your account._ (2008)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080908073106/http://www.facebo...
| mrzool wrote:
| That would be unthinkable now. Crazy how things have changed.
| EGreg wrote:
| Why unthinkable ??
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Because all major actors are laser-focused on extracting
| more revenue with ads and subscriptions rather than
| improving connectivity and freedom.
| [deleted]
| winrid wrote:
| You can also create an RSS feed from your FastComments account!
|
| https://blog.fastcomments.com/(7-08-2020)-create-an-rss-feed...
|
| Just a little feature I added because I know some people love
| RSS.
| mrzool wrote:
| In other news, the blog of the RSS Advisory Board, inactive since
| 2014, started getting updates again :) It was a pleasant surprise
| seeing new articles from them pop up in my feed reader again
| after such a long time.
| bhouston wrote:
| I noticed recently that I get more engagement on Mastodon than
| Twitter. It shifted in the last couple months as I have been
| posting to both the same content.
| Havoc wrote:
| Is the quality of the engagement better?
| realitythreek wrote:
| That's a pretty low bar, the comparison is to Twitter.
| vidarh wrote:
| Similar, but I think that is natural at this point.
|
| My main account has 100x as many followers on Twitter, but
| accumulated over many years, and I suspect a fairly substantial
| number are bots and/or accounts that are now rarely in use,
| combined with the algo pushing a culture of just following huge
| numbers of people which may never surface for you in the feed
| anyway.
|
| If we trust the view counts on Twitter, the average tweet gets
| seen by just a tiny fraction of my followers.
|
| On Mastodon, meanwhile, a very substantial proportion of my
| followers actively engage, and about half has shown "signs of
| life" (post, like, boost) in the last week or so.
|
| That said, this _will_ change as accounts age and slowly get
| abandoned there too, so it will take a long time before we see
| if there 's a qualitative difference.
| HuhWhatMeansYou wrote:
| [dead]
| RobotToaster wrote:
| pleroma also has gopher support.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-06-24 23:00 UTC)