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Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:25 JST Ernie Smith

Publishers should target RSS readers specifically.
They are a savvy audience that deserves our focus and respect.
https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/112657223286902981

In conversation about 5 months ago from writing.exchange permalink
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  Sick Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:16 JST Sick Sun
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  - feld
  @ernie @feld RSS lets you embed arbitrary HTML in a feed (whether the client chooses to view it that way is up to them though) but all activitypub clients strip HTML to a few tags. It is actually the opposite.
  
  In conversation about 5 months ago permalink
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:17 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld For one thing, I can’t customize the design, which matters to me as a publisher.
  
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  feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:18 JST feld
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  @ernie what's non-standardized / built wrong about RSS?
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:19 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld We can plan for racist jackasses by architecting for it or building contexts where comments are minimized. Planning around non-standardized technology that we have to keep patching because it was built all wrong? Way harder.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:20 JST Ernie Smith
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  - feld
  @feld Turning off/disabling/limiting comments on a feed is significantly easier to fix than resolving all the stuff that’s broken with old implementations, which leave publishers tethered to platforms that can change the contract on them at any time.
  We shouldn’t have to worry about Google breaking our deliverability one day.
  
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  feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:21 JST feld
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  @ernie newsletters don't offer the ability for some racist hooligan to leave crazy comments for others to suffer the pain of reading.
  
  Why do we insist on turning everything published into a social forum where we just farm the most obscene opinions. Sometimes information should just be disseminated via one-way communications.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:22 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld Newsletters, BTW, are built using 30-year-old tech that is extremely messy and broken, and is poorly optimized for distribution. Seeing ActivityPub as a replacement/improvement for newsletters, I think, offers a better frame of reference.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:23 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld I would argue that the existence of the newsletter highlights that RSS is not enough for everyone, hence why ActivityPub matters.
  Both are necessary in this environment for different reasons.
  
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  feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:38:24 JST feld
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  @ernie A lot of sites should be focusing on RSS but instead they're focusing on ActivityPub integration which is a terrible idea and will be a huge waste of resources. Not everything on the internet needs to support user interaction... :sigh:
  
  Part of the issue though is that Eugen doesn't want Mastodon to ever become an RSS reader because letting the other end know you're following and being able to receive comments/replies is his direct focus, so the people who get their information from RSS is tiny compared to the people who get their information from social media feeds
  
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  Sick Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:42:05 JST Sick Sun
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  @ernie @feld I apologize, I misread the meaning.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:42:06 JST Ernie Smith
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  - Sick Sun
  @sun @feld I didn’t say ActivityPub offered it. I just said that’s what matters to me as a publisher.
  
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  feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:44:16 JST feld
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  @ernie RSS died IMO because you could get better engagement on Twitter. Why bother publishing an RSS feed for your site if you can just auto-post to Twitter, and the users who click the links are forced to get ad impressions? You can't make any money with a free RSS feed that has the whole article in it
  
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  Sick Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:44:16 JST Sick Sun
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  @feld @ernie I need feeds for things, it could be RSS or ActivityPub but if it's ActivityPub I need direct access to the outbox so I don't have to authenticate to anything to just read the feed. At this point if ActivityPub integration gets me my feeds back (crap sites have all removed their RSS) then I'll take what I can get.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:44:18 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld So in this light, ActivityPub could be seen less as a technical spec but as an opportunity to build consensus around something both end users and publishers can take advantage of. Will it work, who knows?
  But I think RSS lost some publishers along the way, and getting them back onto something similar will take work.
  
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  Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:44:19 JST Ernie Smith
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  @feld Those goals need to get back into sync, or you run into situations where RSS gets disregarded—where it becomes just a feed of summaries with links to the original posts. The result is that the whole thing gets undermined long-term.
  The ecosystem isn’t working for everyone, and that’s why people are grabbing out for different directions like newsletters or ActivityPub.
  
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  feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 01:44:20 JST feld
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  @ernie but RSS users don't want your design or your font. They want to consume it in a more simplified way, like Reader Mode in the browser. I guess your goals are not aligned with those of heavy RSS users.
  
  In conversation about 5 months ago permalink
  
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