Follow the Feeds: Why You Should Use RSS
Donald P. Goodman III
Following people and websites is one of our primary activities on the Internet—the creators we love are constantly putting out new artwork, new writing, new music, news, whatever the case may be, and we want to keep track of it. There are lots of ways to do so, but I'd like to urge everyone to follow one in particular today: RSS.
RSS (and Atom) are very simple XML files which a creator—a blogger, musician, whatever—puts up on its website. A user subscribes to this, typically just by clicking on it, or by using a special program (or “app”) called a feed-reader or aggregator (feed-reader seems perfectly adequate to me). You then ask the feed-reader every so often, whenever you're ready to view the material, to go check the feeds to which you've subscribed. Your feed-reader then dutifully reports to you whatever is new, and you view it as and when you wish. You can view everything, view some and skip some, or view none, as you desire.
That's it! It really is that simple. You don't need an account; you don't need to remember a special password; there is no two-factor authentication, waiting for a code to be sent to your phone, or registering your identity with any centralized authority. You just download and view.
To sum up:
- Find some content you like.
- Subscribe by clicking or entering.
- View at your convenience.
It's that simple.
If you're wondering why you've never heard of this before, good question! In fact, you have heard of it before, and you may very well use it every day: podcasts, almost universally, are kept track of and downloaded through a feed-reader. Whatever podcatcher you're using is RSS! That's how easy it really is; you've probably been using it for years and never realized it. The way you get your podcasts can be the way you get lots of content, even all of it if you want.
It is truly the correct way to use the Internet. Let's look at a few reasons why.
Advantages of Feeds Over Platforms
Feeds are Anonymous
Feeds are anonymous; at least, as anonymous as anything can get on the Internet. They can be combined with other technologies, like Tor, to make them truly anonymous; but talking about that is far beyond our purposes here. Just using feeds on the Internet, without any additional encryption or fancy tech, is basically anonymous. Let's explain.
Remember that, with the big platforms (sometimes we call them “silos”, since they gather together lots of content the way a silo gathers grain), you have to log in. You give them a username and a password; sometimes you give them even more, like a cell number, a birth date, or more. They are also able to determine at least roughly where you live, through your IP address, and lots of other information about you based on data analysis. It is the very opposite of anonymous. Even if you're using a false name and other information, dollars to doughnuts they still know it's you; there's just too much information out there for them not to. If you've spent any non-trivial amount of time on these platforms, they've got it figured out.
With feeds, on the other hand, you aren't logging in to anything; you're just downloading a little text-only file and seeing what's in it. (Rather, your feed-reader is; it then shows you what's in it.) The fact that your IP downloaded this file will be in the server logs, but it takes a lot of follow-up work to identify you based on that, while with the silos you've already identified yourself for them.
Is this true, perfect anonymity? Not even close. But it's a long, long cry better than handing over everything about yourself before you even look at anything. Which leads us to our next point.
Decentralization is Good
Many of us follow people on, say, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X. That's fine; but keep in mind that all of these platforms are centralized. They have a bank of servers that they control and only they can access, and on those servers they save, and spend a great deal of money analyzing, everything you do and see on their platforms. If you so much as mouse over something on Twitter, Twitter knows about it; if you stop scrolling to glance at a few seconds of video on Instagram, Facebook (which owns Instagram) knows about it. They save that data point and analyze it. They know that you've done it, and they use that to show you what they think you'd like to see, even if that's not what you think you'd like to see.
That's why you're constantly seeing things on these platforms that you don't want to see. You've “followed” people on these platforms, and you'll probably see at least some of what they post. But you won't see all of it. You'll see lots of things that you haven't followed, because that's what the algorithm wants you to see, because that's what the algorithm has determined is most likely to monetize your eyeballs. That's what the platforms sell to advertisers: their knowledge of you and your habits. They are financially incentivized to cram as much stuff into your face as they can, whether or not you actually want to see it.
It's been said so often that it's nearly a cliché, but it's the truth: with these platforms, you are not the customer, you are the product.
With feeds, none of that happens. You decide what you want to see; if you don't want to be spammed by pornbots or assaulted with advertisements for obscene products, just don't subscribe to those feeds. The only thing the server knows is that somebody's feed-reader has downloaded the feed file, nothing more. It doesn't know what you've looked at, how much time you spent on it, what you skipped, or anything about who you are. It can't analyze that to stuff irrelevant smut into your eyeballs because it doesn't know any of it.
In addition to cleansing our lives of irrelevant or offensive nonsense, subscribing to a feed rather than (or at least in addition to) following on a platform is a great act of respect for the people that we follow; it ensures that we actually see what they are sending out. All of it, not just some of it. We don't want their creations to be lost in a sea of garbage.
Respecting Your Followers
Offering a feed for your followers is an act of respect and dignity. Your followers want to follow you. By offering them a feed to do so, you are showing them that you aren't interested in spamming them, or tracking them, or analyzing their usage data to better streamline your content provision. You are showing them that you want them to see what they've asked to see, and that your creation is independent of algorithmic adjustment. This is respect not only for your followers, but for your own work.
For Creators: How Do I Provide a Feed?
You probably already are! Many content management systems (CMSs) automatically produce feeds, both RSS and Atom, which can be easily subscribed to by your followers. Wordpress, for example, which is by far the most popular, generates feeds by default; popular creator site Squarespace does, as well. If you're using Wordpress or Squarespace, you're already done.
Others, like Joomla and Drupal, have the capable of generating feeds but don't have it turned on by default. So your solution is simple: turn it on! The documentation for your CMS will make it clear how to do this; a quick search should take care of it.
Otherwise, you'll have to write your own. If you're a coder, even stuff as simple as HTML, it's beyond easy; if you're not, it's simple enough to learn. It's important, and well worth your time.
One way to help your followers is to provide a link to your feed. As we'll see shortly, it's easy enough to find a feed, but put a link somewhere to jog people's memory that you have one, and to further encourage people to use your feed in particular and feeds in general. The RSS icon is well-known and easily recognizable; there is a separate one for Atom, too, if you're so inclined, but RSS can serve for both. Let your followers know that you care about them! Help them actually see what you're producing!
For Followers: How Do I Follow Feeds?
Even easier. First, pick a feed-reader. You're probably doing this on a mobile device these days, and there are a number of excellent feed-readers for Android. My recommendation is Feeder, which is available both on F-Droid and on Google Play, but there are plenty more. Take a look around and see what works for you.
I'm sure there are apps for iPhones, but I don't use one and can't recommend any.
Next, subscribe to some feeds. Feeder has a great feature (which I imagine is found in most feed-readers) of finding the RSS or Atom feed for you: just enter the domain of the website when it asks you to subscribe. So do the following:
- Go to “Add Feed”.
- Type, or copy-paste, the domain (e.g., http://gorettipub.org).
- Choose the feed you want.
And done! No need to plumb around looking for a specific feed URL; the domain name is plenty.
Often, there are multiple feeds. Some CMSes, like Wordpress, will have one feed for posts and one for comments; pick both if you like, or just one or the other if you'd prefer. Goretti Publications has four; one RSS, one Atom, and two for the GorPod postcast, one to download the files in Ogg format and one for mp3. Just subscribe to the ones you're interested in seeing.
If there are multiple feeds with the same content (e.g., Goretti Publications offers both an RSS-formatted feed and an Atom-formatted feed), I recommend you choose the Atom feed. Atom is a technically superior standard, and the more people that are using it, the better. But it's a matter of complete indifference, ultimately; both are wonderful ways of following people without worrying about tracking, spam, and obscenity flooding your airwaves.
Lastly, use the feeds. Don't doom-scroll on Twitter; open your feed-reader, get the new content, and view it that way.
Conclusion: Why Should Catholics Care?
So why should a Catholic care? Because privacy is important, and supporting our Catholic creators is important, and starving the non-Catholic (and indeed anti-Catholic) platforms of their audience is important. These platforms are at the whims of their owners, and all too often are turned to purposes utterly antithetical to the faith. Furthermore, even when they are cotravelers with us on some issues, they may be quite in opposition on others; the present proliferation of smut on Twitter/X is a prime example.
We, as Catholics, should not be dependent on non-Catholics for how we reach each other and how we spread the Faith. We should rely on each other, in a decentralized way. Feeds provide an excellent step in that direction.
So use feeds! Show respect for your followers; show respect for those your following; make sure that you actually see what you want to see; purge your life of algorithmically-generated (and often obscene) spam; and live a happier life.
Praise be to Christ the King!