What is RSS?
A way to follow sites without relying on notifications or an algorithm.
What it does
RSS is a machine-readable list a site publishes saying "here is what we posted recently". Most news sites and blogs still publish one.
An RSS reader fetches those lists on a schedule and shows you what is new. Only the sites you subscribed to appear, in the order they were published.
How it differs from a social timeline
The ordering is decided by your subscription list and the clock, not by an algorithm. Things appear in the order they were posted, not the order someone wants you to see them.
Nothing you did not subscribe to shows up. No recommendations, no sponsored posts mixed into the stream — the ads on this service sit outside the article list.
The trade-off is that nothing interesting arrives by accident. You decide what you read.
Getting started
Enter the URL of a site you want to follow and its feed is detected automatically. You do not need to hunt for the RSS URL yourself.
If you are not sure where to start, picking a few genres subscribes you to a representative set in one step.
Keeping the backlog manageable
Most people who give up on RSS do so because unread counts pile up faster than they can read. Two things help.
- Do not stack up high-frequency sites. Five sites posting 20 items a day is 100 items a day on its own
- Do not try to catch up. Treat the backlog as disposable and mark everything read periodically