In a world where everything is owned by a gargantuan commercial entity, RSS is subversive, an act of rebellion. It harks back to the early days of the Internet where freedom and open standards were the future, rather than Big Data, Big Tech, and Big Lock-in.

RSS is a newsfeed than you define. You subscribe to websites and they give you a list of stories to read. How is that different from social media?

It’s decentralised. There is no Facebook or X of RSS. Google Reader used to be the big fish, but it wasn’t big enough for Google and they killed it over a decade ago. Even then, it wasn’t the only game in town.

It’s difficult to track. Ad tech is central to the web, sadly. Everything you do is recorded and stashed away so you can be shown ever more personalised advertising. Or at least so they can show you the same three coffee machines that you rejected when you bought a different one last week. That’s not completely eliminated with an RSS feed, but part of the reason that it’s quick and easy is there is a lot less tracking and advertising.

There is no lock-in. There are dozens of different ways to read your RSS feed. There are web clients and software for your desktop computer, your tablet and your phone. There’s a standard format, called OPML, that you can use to import and export your feeds. So if you’re using, say, Feedly and you want to move to, say, FreshRSS, there is really only inertia keeping you.

You can use the same interface for all your feeds. I read Ars Technica and The Verge and some Substack newsletters, all with the same interface. I subscribe to dozens of smaller sites, some who only publish a few times a month, and I don’t have to remember to visit – new stories just appear in my feed, ready to read.

I dip in when I have a few minutes to spare. I typically find it a better use of my time than social media. Though, of course, I spend more time there than I should, too.

I don’t know of anyone else who uses an RSS reader, but I think they should be a lot more popular. This is my small attempt at some advocacy!