> With RSS, you subscribe directly to websites, blogs, or news outlets, meaning there is no middleman algorithm deciding what you see.
This enters a failure mode very soon, especially because most people using RSS-like technologies would typically subscribe to more sources than they can typically read through. Like it or not, _the algorithm_ does serve the purpose in prioritizing and discovery. The trouble, IMO, is with the objectives for these recommendation and ranking algorithms.
A middleman/aggregator who is paid by subscribers would be incentivized for the users, a marketplace-like aggregator would always have trade-offs.
Wouldn't a personalized RSS algo be a great use case for a simple LLM?
Algorithms other than FIFO are fine when they serve you. Way back when I had a mail reader (Gnus) that used a Bayesian classifier to predict which emails I might especially want to read, based on last reading experiences. That was nifty! An RSS reader could do the same, on my own machine, based on my own preferences and not some marketer’s. I’d like that an awful lot.
This is already a problem with things like Mastodon - as soon as you subscribe to some more "spammy" accounts such as news outlets, all the other content is drowned out.
So yes, having kind of re-ranking _algorithm_ can be a good thing, whether we like it or not.
I've been thinking about this, and I actually think these days this might be a feature not a bug.
Given the amount of AI generated content out there, I am increasingly searching for ways to keep track of the sources I DO trust to be human-made.
RSS would completely solve that problem in a way that algorithms just reintroduce, because it forces you to tailor the content yourself.
Semi-Popular youtube channels regularly get offers from someone who wants to buy their channel. There are people and companies that put up good/useful content for a while to get subscribers and then shift focus. There have been several cases where someone has lost control of their system/password because of a "hack". Likely there are more that I'm not aware of.
RSS protects against none of these.
Didn't Bluesky solve this problem already by allowing anyone to publish their own algorithms?
I feel like user generated sorting algorithms would be a great fit for RSS. Power users would get an ability to tweak their feeds to their liking, while other users would have a lot to choose from