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Comment by capybara_2020 | Hacker News Reader

capybara_2020

Active RSS user here till Google killed Reader.

I tried using Feedly last year. Added feeds and it was HORRIBLE experience. Not Feedly but the actual feeds.

Some of them give you the title and then tell you to go to actual website to read the article.

Others has a virtually non-existent summary.

During RSS's heydays I remember being able to just see the summary and click on it and read the article right there and then. Now these feeds try to push you back to the website hard. Making RSS feeds feel like a broken tool. With the content there mostly an after thought.

I think sites killed off RSS feeds.

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Those sites existed back during the Google Reader era already. I don’t even avoid those, and currently have only one title only, and 2 or 3 title + short summary sites in my TT-RSS list, everything else is full text.

Not to mention, you can actually file an issue on the blog owner's github (if present), making a ruckus about the feed quality. I did it once and he was happy to patch it - after familiarizing himself with what a feed even was, as he didn't know his site had one.

Simple RSS for Android is still available at F-droid. It's 14 years out of maintenance & it still loads(with warning) & works for my feeds. Some give just a summary, some the 1st paragraph and a few still supply the whole article.

I am always on the lookout for a simple, decentralized, modern alternative, if anyone knows of any.

I use https://weloverss.com/ as my Google Reader alternative. TheOldReader is also nice. I prefer the first due to its ui not being bloated - only thing I miss is timestamps.

I remember the Theoldreader. I quite liked it. I can't remember why I stopped using it and switched to feedly.

Thanks for the tip on weloverss. I'll give it a try.

My preference is for inoreader. I’ve tried old reader a couple of times, just seemed to be missing things. For instance I couldn’t seem to get a dark theme. In inoreader it’s easy to switch theme. Inoreader seems to have a nicer ui, I also like the fact you can see what articles are popular during the day/week.

TheOldReader.com was and remains my replacement for Google Reader. I have a paid account as a gesture of support although I use only a tiny fraction of the 500 subscriptions available. Their "add a subscription" utility works quite well on sites with no mention of a feed. And of course I discovered this post via RSS...

Or you can use apps like Reeder who'd parse the original webpage for you with a single click.

Yeah I always opened the website when using RSS, even in 2008, so I don't mind.

I still read all the same feeds I had on Google Reader first on Digg Reader and now on Inoreader free version. Main way I consume news although I do look at Facebook for family stuff and twitter for very topical stuff and following folks like Elon Musk who mostly tweet.

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