2020-04-18-use-web-feeds.html (8492B) - raw
1 <!-- title: Use web feeds! --> 2 <!-- slug: use-web-feeds --> 3 <!-- categories: Decentralization --> 4 <!-- date: 2020-04-18T14:59:00Z --> 5 6 <p> 7 Web feeds are data formats used to provide users with updates through web syndication. Websites 8 can use web feeds to post their content in a format that allows users to easily check for updates 9 regularly. Examples of web feeds are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(Web_standard)">Atom</a>, 10 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS">RSS</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON_Feed">JSON Feed</a>.</p> 11 <!-- /p --> 12 13 <p> 14 The most popular is RSS, you have probably heard of it. Until a year ago, RSS to me was an old 15 technology that some people used to get their news on an ugly feed reader. I thought this 16 technology was obsolete because of the couple <a href="https://indieweb.org/silo">silos</a> that 17 monopolize online social interactions. Well, this couldn't be further from the truth. Web feeds 18 are definitely not obsolete, and those "ugly readers" I remembered were just particular examples, 19 but there are a lot of beautiful readers out there. There's also a lot of people that want to be 20 able to get updates on different sites without the need to have an account on a centralized 21 third-party service.</p> 22 <!-- /p --> 23 24 <p>Let's see the benefits of using web feeds.</p> 25 26 <h3>Web decentralization</h3> 27 28 <p> 29 Web feeds allow for web syndication, which is key in order to decentralize the web. When you 30 follow a blog or a podcast through web feeds, neither you nor the content creator rely on a third 31 party to update you on the content. There's no need to post a new update on a social platform. 32 When new content is published, the subscribers will see the updates coming directly from the 33 original domain.</p> 34 <!-- /p --> 35 36 <h3>Centralized updates</h3> 37 38 <p> 39 Wait, what?! Well, not as in "centralized service", but as in you get all the updates from all 40 these different websites in one app or program. Web feeds allow the subscriber to see all the 41 content updates in one place, so convenient! Without it, we probably would have to check every 42 single website regularly to see if new content was published (or maybe design a bot that would do 43 that for us, but still, annoying).</p> 44 <!-- /p --> 45 46 <h3>Control over content posting</h3> 47 48 <p> 49 By not relying on a third party for content updates, creators have full control over their 50 communication channel. It will never shut down—disappearing along with the subscribers—, unless 51 the creator decides to do so. There also won't be any <em>magical</em> algorithms that decide 52 which updates are worth showing to their subscribers and which ones are not, or even which ones 53 <em>magically</em> get deleted. Subscribers get all of them.</p> 54 <!-- /p --> 55 56 <h3>Control over the consumption of content</h3> 57 58 <p> 59 By using web feed readers, you can configure a dark theme, a bigger font, etc. You can even have 60 the content read to you. There are accessibility features for webpages as well, but when using a 61 web feed it is so much easier, since the content is presented in a standardized format. It is also 62 in the user's power to filter the content any way they want. Do you want to block certain words? 63 Done!</p> 64 <!-- /p --> 65 66 <h3>Privacy for the subscriber</h3> 67 68 <p> 69 There's no need to insist on the fact that silos are a privacy nightmare. But there's more. If you 70 are reading a web feed, there are no advertisements tracking you and there are no <a 71 href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon">tracking pixels</a>. You read the content (or not) 72 whenever you want, without anybody tracking you.</p> 73 <!-- /p --> 74 75 <h3>The disadvantages</h3> 76 77 <p> 78 So, why doesn't everyone use it? First of all, most of the blogs I read have a web feed, Mastodon 79 does too, as well as Youtube<sup id="fnref1"><a href="#fn1">1</a></sup>. However, you cannot 80 comment through a feed reader and you normally don't see the "related content" and all those extra 81 features we can find on a website<sup id="fnref2"><a href="#fn2">2</a></sup>. There is also an 82 entry barrier: it takes a couple fewer seconds to hit subscribe/follow than to look for the web 83 feed and open your web feed reader to add it.</p> 84 <!-- /p --> 85 86 <p> 87 Web feeds also work best when you have a lot of sites that publish every once in a while. If you 88 subscribe to 500 sites that publish hourly, it can get overwhelming with the common feed readers 89 (although there are probably others that are ready for this kind of usage and make it nice).</p> 90 <!-- /p --> 91 92 <p> 93 Finally, web feeds avoid tracking subscribers and the embedding of adds. That can be an 94 inconvenience to the content owner, who might want to do that. Although I am not a fan of it, it 95 is definitely something that happens. If that is your case, there is an easy solution: don't post 96 the content on the web feed. Simply put your title and a two-line summary of the content. 97 Subscribers can then press on the link and open the content. This way you keep your subscribers up 98 to date, without losing the capacity to embed ads.</p> 99 <!-- /p --> 100 101 <h2>Why e-mail newsletters are not a web feed substitute</h2> 102 103 <p> 104 E-mail newsletters have that decentralized component, you don't depend on a centralized service 105 (although most of them do, but that isn't necessary). However they are definitely not private. 106 First of all, you need to give out your e-mail address, who knows if it will end up on a spam 107 list? If you want to unsubscribe you have to go to their website and hope for them to erase your 108 data and not only archive it somewhere. Finally, e-newsletters can—and most do—contain tracking 109 pixels, so they can know how many times a subscriber accesses the content and when.</p> 110 <!-- /p --> 111 112 <p> 113 If you have an e-newsletter but don't have a website for it, then you have a reasonable excuse not 114 to have a feed (although you should definitely make a website!). If you post your newsletter 115 online, then add a web feed! It is very easy!</p> 116 <!-- /p --> 117 118 <h2>Fun fact!</h2> 119 120 <p> 121 As a matter of fact, I started writing a post on RSS feeds about three weeks ago. When writing why 122 you should add the whole content on your RSS feed and not only a summary, I remembered that to do 123 so, I did a little hack. I would put the whole content in the <code>description</code> tag, which 124 was designed for a brief summary. That got me thinking, I wanted to follow the standards. After 125 searching for a while, I discovered you can use the <code>content:encoded</code> tag, which is 126 exactly what I needed, but there where other tags that also seemed to do the same. After some more 127 research, I discovered RSS has some standardization issues. So I looked at the alternative I had 128 heard about before: Atom. Apparently, Atom arose from the need to standardize RSS, with a new 129 design that wouldn't have backward compatibility. Atom is very similar to RSS, but I like the fact 130 that there is one clear specification (apparently it has other cool features in case you are 131 interested, but I didn't look into them much).</p> 132 <!-- /p --> 133 134 <p> 135 After reading about this I learned how it worked and implemented for my blog's feed (since Hugo's 136 default is RSS). So if you use my web feed, you are now retrieving an Atom feed!</p> 137 <!-- /p --> 138 139 <p> 140 As you probably figured my first draft had a different approach than the final post. This was 141 partially because shortly after I started writing, <a 142 href="https://kevq.uk/why-having-a-full-post-rss-feed-is-a-good-idea/">this</a> post came out so I 143 changed my focus a bit. If you don't post your full content on your web feed, read it!</p> 144 <!-- /p --> 145 146 <!-- footnotes --> 147 <hr /> 148 149 <ol> 150 <li id="fn1"> 151 If you want to follow people from other big social media sites, there are ways to do so! Use an 152 instance of <a href="https://github.com/zedeus/nitter">Nitter</a> for Twitter or an instance of 153 <a href="https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/">Bibliogram</a> for Instagram. If you have other 154 sites in mind, look around the Internet, someone probably implemented a web feed for it. <a 155 href="#fnref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></li> 156 <!-- /li --> 157 <li id="fn2"> 158 This is actually seen as a good thing most of the time, as you get to consume the content 159 without any distractions. <a href="#fnref2" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the 160 text">↩</a></li> 161 <!-- /li --> 162 </ol>