I setup a self-hosted FreshRSS + extensions for this very purpose. With a little effort, I can even pull in social media feeds and YouTube subscriptions. Now I have a very plain (but highly functional) UI with a chronological list of the sources I wish to follow. No recommendations, no algorithms, no infinite anything. For discovery, I can now go elsewhere and look for new content with intention, even if facilitated by algorithms. But I've successfully divorced that from the act of consumption.
I can tell you, it feels better. I have experienced what I consider to be a material improvement in consumption habits, and overall mental health.
I'm very curious how you manage to pull in social feeds-- there are many billions of dollars working against your accessing social media posts that haven't been dipped in digital crack. As far as I can tell, the API's that are available are really limited, as a result.
Maybe RSSHub? https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub
I do the same, I include a few news outlets, HN, some good blogs I follow, even podcasts. All sorted chronologically: you can filter by source or tag, no clutter, no ads, just links and often even the full text. All is hosted on an ancient RaspberryPi 3 and exposed over public Internet (with password protection).
https://freshrss.org/
can you elaborate on the setup? this is interesting I want the same
This looks exactly what I am trying to achieve with RSS but never quite got to the point where it's usable enough to stick to it long term.
Sounds like a great thing to build! Seems like a lot of commenters are interested in more granular implementation details :)
This does sound divine. Please give us some more details.