To play devil's advocate, they kept rss feeds for youtube (albeit it not easily found). This allowed me to 'subscribe' and get updates via newsboat on Linux. When i open these links, a redirect extension in my browser takes me to invidious and noscript prevents google from pulling even small bits of data. Then i use yt-dlp with a sponsorrblock flag to grab the actual vid and watch it using mpv. Yay...but yeah, Google has weird loopholes they left open.

More obvious example of this irony is buying a Google Pixel and installing GrapheneOS.

It was the most brilliant bit of corporate skullduggery I've ever seen. I was dating a guy back then who claimed that he worked at the Big G and had developed a plan for killing RSS and ATOM. I figured he was bullshitting me, and for a few other reasons we didn't work out. But as it turned out every thing he said would happen, did.

What about the terrible clickbait headlines? When ever I have tried to integrate RSS it's been mind numbing to find real content.