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Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

You're not wrong. But I do wish more people were happy with those "failures", which basically describe the Internet of yore.

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I'm a creator myself.

Why would I want to build an audience on a platform with no monetization possibility, ever?

Even sponsorships are not possible, since I can't reliably count reads (which I can even in email).

It's nice to think of the "classic" internet, but it's a naivety that will keep RSS on the edges. And I love RSS idea! I want it back! I hate subscribing to email newsletters in a way that makes it hard to manage and organize.

Plenty of creators create without the expectation of direct payment. Of course, many are not in a position to do so as well. But I expect that, for the most part, the platforms make a lot more money off the creators attempting to monetize than the creators themselves do. And, in so doing, they make the overall experience worse.

But, yes, RSS was always pretty fringe. And today there's enough hope being dangled that a newsletter or YouTube channel will make it big that it's even more fringe.

When counting email reads, how do you account for individuals who configure their mail client to not download images by default? I do this in Gmail to avoid tracking pixels from being loaded. I imagine there’s a sizable subset of more technical users who do this?

You can subscribe to newsletters via FeedBin, which costs $5 a month, and will act as a source to many feed readers (as well as being a web-based feed/newsletter/twitter feed reader itself).

I'm also a creator

I do it to hopefully help people out in life. I get enough traffic and thank you notes to make it worthwhile.

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