“Social” media via RSS in 2024

As an Emacs zealot, I used to use elfeed for subscribing to RSS feeds, but I wanted something that I could keep up with on my phone so I ended up installing Tiny Tiny RSS on a NearlyFreeSpeech “site”. TT-RSS has a lot of functionality that some RSS readers don’t, so probably not all of what I describe below is universally applicable.

I use Vivaldi as my web browser; the desktop version has a useful tool that shows when a site specifies a feed in its page source. Vivaldi also has a built-in feed reader, although it doesn’t sync across devices or do any of the useful filtering stuff TT-RSS does. Thunderbird has a reader too, as does Microsoft Outlook (lol) – generally, what I’m trying to say here is that there are a few options available for anyone who doesn’t want to set up a cronjob on the server/become an Emacs weirdo/etc.

Atom feeds are also a thing and I actually don’t know the difference. I have the internet at my disposal and could look it up. I probably will at some point; for now I choose to remain ignorant.

Sites and their feeds

  • YouTube has native feeds, although the URL is based on the channel ID rather than the username. The easiest way to find the ID is to use some kind of sketchy third-party service; then the feed URL format is www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={ID}. Video descriptions do seem to be embedded into the feed, but don’t show up in TT-RSS for some reason.
  • Bluesky similarly bases feeds on user IDs, so again a third-party service is the easiest way to grab these. The feed URL format is bsky.app/profile/{ID}/rss, including the did:plc: part of the ID. Individual users and lovers of “““decentralised””” walled gardens [make it make sense!!] can choose to turn off their own feeds, though. Bluesky “feeds” don’t do RSS feeds, unfortunately. In my reader, neither quoted posts nor images show up, although it does indicate when one of these exists in the original post, so I know to click through to look at it. Only top-level posts go into the feed, no replies, no reposts.
  • Mastodon enables feeds for all user accounts, at {instanceurl}/@{username}/rss. I don’t have much experience with these as I follow Mastodon accounts in the fediverse, but they include public and unlisted posts, possibly replies, and once again definitely not reposts.
  • GoToSocial does feeds on an opt-in basis at {instanceurl}/@{username}/feed.rss; again no reposts, no private posts, and in this case, no unlisted posts either. They’re in a silly format where the content of every item is prefixed with “{user} made a new post:”.
  • Dreamwidth is admittedly the gold standard for providing feeds, at {username}.dreamwidth.org/data/rss. The full text of the post shows up in the feed, correctly formatted, with cuts preserved as links to the original as if it’s being viewed on a DW reading page. Digest authentication lets you log in (if your feed reader supports it) and then access-locked posts will show up in the feed. It even shows a comment count somehow (more of a turn off for me, but I recognise that most people seem to enjoy seeing metrics). You can even subscribe to specific tags in a certain journal/comm only, by appending them to the URL: for example, one of my subscriptions is to fandom-icons.dreamwidth.org/data/rss?tag=movie:+final+fantasy,video+games:+final+fantasy.
  • WordPress: works fine, URL format {URL}/feed.
  • Blogspot: also works fine, URL format {URL}/feeds/posts/default.
  • Canalblog: tout comme les deux précédents en effet, URL format {URL}/rss.
  • Tumblr: only for blogs that have custom themes I think – at least definitely not for those restricted to logged-in users. Reblogs show up, which makes a nice change from whatever all the other microblogging services are doing. Reblog chains render as nested blockquotes though, which makes them pretty unreadable on mobile, at least in my reader. URL format {username}.tumblr.com/rss.
  • Reddit: unbelievably, does have native RSS feeds for subreddits. www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}.rss, www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/top/.rss and www.reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/new/.rss are all available, although I have no idea how a “top posts” feed is supposed to work when RSS is chronological. Feeds for users also exist: www.reddit.com/user/{user}.rss.
  • Hall of shame: nothing for tw[redacted]r obviously, nothing for Instagram and I frankly don’t know what they’re playing at when they walled-garden the fuck out of their site but at the same time don’t actually let people make accounts unless their email address is ilovefacebook@gafam.com. Nothing for Pixiv either, alas, even though I feel like I google “pixiv rss when” approximately once a week. Some third-party services have popped up here and there claiming to offer Instagram RSS feeds, but they all seem to stop working within a few days.
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