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Comment by Yhippa | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure Vice Media is one of the groups that's going to get hard by this so I'm not surprised.

What if there was a way to connect media consumers to the content they wanted. If there was a way to subscribe to a certain news publisher and you had software that aggregated it. Then when you wanted to look at news you had one place where you could look at all the news you wanted. Wouldn't that be great? You could even have personalization depending on how often you read certain articles if you wanted a cherry on top.

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HAHA, Sounds like RSS or Atom... Which apparently aren't cool anymore

You might be surprised how much support there is for RSS. It is a very easy way for media sites to integrate with social networks and external services. They might not show a feed link to an end user, but if you can guess its URL, then you're in.

I support RSS/Atom on my site, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to bother, at this point, unless they are using it to auto-post to facebook or twitter through other services.

Isn't that what Apple News and Flipboard and the myriad of others that have flopped have tried to do?

Yes. The filter bubble and information overload are two problems, somewhat related that many companies have tried to tackle.

However, it is really difficult for a company like Flipboard to change user habits and compete with Facebook. Users are already in their platform. I think we must hold these companies to a higher standard..

isn't that RSS news readers in a nutshell?

Yes, exactly. It is even pretty easy to find blogs from a gamut of different perspectives and aggregate them yourself. I don't know why anyone would get news from the likes of Facebook.

Not everyone likes to be in control. Many people want the fb algorithms to show them the articles they might like. With RSS this same people experience the paralysis of choice, they're better off if fb decides for them what they "want" to see. Besides, if they get incorrect suggestions that have something to complain about. One should not underestimate the willingness of a general person to find something to complain about.

It gives you this kind of entertainment: > Facebook’s Algorithm is Like the Mafia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhbEUKHsGi4)

Google News?

Google killed that.

(Reader)

Though alternatives exist.

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