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.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    My problem with rss is that I can’t get rss feeds from 10 different websites and curate them into a single feed. The services I looked at charged out the ass for this and I couldn’t find a program to do it locally.

    I don’t want to subscribe to someone else’s feed.

    • pacoboyd@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      FreshRSS or Tiny Tiny RSS are just a couple of self hosted options. I just setup FreshRSS last week and am using FeedMe app on Android to read my feeds.

      My only issue so far is not every site has RSS feeds anymore. I tried RSS-Bridge in docker, but had issues figuring out how to enable the bridges, the documentation for it isn’t great.

      • bungle_in_the_jungle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Since you seem technical enough to use docker you should look at n8n. I’ve been using it the past few months for odds and ends and I love it so much.

        You could totally set up an incoming webhook and then process anything you like in between and format it as an RSS feed going out.

    • zebs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Newsblur is pretty decent, and has (or atleast used to - I’ve not checked) have a free version (likely limited in number of feeds). I pay and is $36 a year.

      You can organise feeds from various sites into folders - clicking the folder will give a view that combines the different feeds into one.

      Android app is pretty decent too.

      https://www.newsblur.com/