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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Rooty@lemmy.world to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

Over reliance on algorithms has degraded the user experience to the point that the average user is drowning in ragebait and extremist politics, because they drive up engagement. Just like a toddler, algorithms don't discriminate between good and bad attention, so everything that gets clicks is thrust forward. Now, you could hope to train the algorithm to show you only postive things, but engagement is engagement and the algorithm curators often engage in rage farming, where your feed is injected with things that are likely to enrage you.

You can avoid this by installing an RSS reader, going to your favorite sites, and manually adding a RSS feed. Now, your reader has things that you manually selected, with the added bonus of having a content pipe free of malicious interference. You can also divide topics in a way that you can avoid certain themes and news until you decide to engage them.

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[-] Steev@lemmy.world 55 points 1 year ago

There was a time when Digg and Google Reader were still around that I never touched Reddit. I would just have Google Reader with a bunch of useful RSS feeds and if I wanted to have some social element, there was Digg. Then Digg shit the bed, Google got bored of Reader and I ended up on Reddit.

I think you’re right. It’s time to get RSS back in place.

[-] nadram@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Feedly does a good job with the free version. I just went back to it a few weeks ago.

[-] GeekFTW@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Seconding Feedly. I was Google Reader ride or die till the last day, and Feedly stepped up and offered an account import iirc so people could just swap right over. Did so immediately and have been with them ever since.

Hasn't been a single news story or article (in my fields of interest) that has popped up on Reddit over the last 12+ years that I haven't also seen via RSS feeds +/- an hour of it's appearance. Just have to deal once every couple years with removing/replacing a dead/changed feed and that's a mild enough annoyance with any RSS reader.

[-] mikelykzit@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I have found myself using Feedly more these past few weeks as well.

If you're on Android, a great companion is the FeedMe app. It has a lot more customization options and can download (for offline reading) full articles, rather than just showing the snippet Feedly does.

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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
407 points (97.4% liked)

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