I love the piece Cory Doctorow wrote about RSS.

[davew@mastodon.social]

I love the piece Cory Doctorow wrote about RSS.

But I take exception to the idea that it's been dormant, or that Google made it work. The NYT did that. And there were lots of good if not great feed readers before Google.

https://scripting.com/2026/03/07/204625.html?title=rssHasNeverBeenDormant

And Google, by requiring titles, really mucked everything up. We're still paying the price, even though their product has been gone since 2013.

[tuckerm@saltylike.us]

@davew Did RSS feeds commonly not have titles before Google Reader? I wasn't aware of that. What did the UI show for a summary?

[davew@mastodon.social]

@tuckerm

some did, some didn't.

my blog has both kinds -- some posts without some with.

http://scripting.com/

[drwhitt@mastodon.social]

@davew The https URL doesn’t resolve (as expected?); changing it to http worked (as expected).

[drwhitt@mastodon.social]

@davew “Not Secure” lol

[tinfoiling@cosocial.ca]

@davew Exactly. The story of RSS needs to be clear and understood. Google really did —uck it up.

[jbond@mastodon.social]

@davew Reminded again that we need good mechanisms for "Post once, re-post everywhere". Especially in these days of multiple socials.

A big part of the problem is the different post lengths and mechanisms for threading. Especially when adding new thread posts later.

[davew@mastodon.social]

@jbond -- it's impossible as long as each system has a different idea of what a post is.

[cogdog@cosocial.ca]

@davew Hear hear! The day Reader bit the dust I took imported subscription file into Digg Reader and kept on.

[nedhamson1@mastodon.social]

@davew inoreader