The state of the internet these days is extremely noisy and divisive. Every day it bombards our fragile minds with absurd and terrible things, but a lot of constructive content is widely available. Algorithms that emotionally fuel social media tempt us to ignore the positive and consume junk instead. We need to cut them off to clear our minds and calm our lives.
RSS is no secretand it traces its roots back to the last millennium (as I like to say). Before social media blew our minds with the weirdest content ever created, people got their news straight from the horse’s mouth. So why not? If you liked someone, you followed them (as in social media). But the problem begins and ends with the middleman – the organizations that shape your content are fed by those who know what forms of black magic.
At one point, YouTube stopped promoting channels I cared about and instead used content it wanted me to consume — like videos about people eating inhuman amounts of food or chatbots becoming conscious and trying to get out of the matrix. It was funny and I felt the need to cut through the noise. So it was appropriate to call back to a simpler time, and I did so with a 40-year-old text editor.
Emacs and RSS
Two technologies as old as the mountains
Many sites publish their content in HTML and RSS formats. The latter is a lighter document consumed by RSS readers. The main selling point is the combination, not the individual reader. Before social media, RSS readers would combine content from multiple sources into one feed that was easier to stay on top of.
Emacs is a decades-old text editor that’s exclusive to nerds. The barrier to entry is knowledge of Elisp, an obscure programming language that is too elegant even for developers. I don’t expect to convert you, but Emacs has some cool features I’d like to share.
The first critical thing I can’t live without is a keyboard-centric workflow. for a a programmer nerd like meI need the highest efficiency at my fingertips. I have hundreds (if not thousands) of commands to memorize, so I want to give them to the same part of my brain that is responsible for breathing. So if I forget them, I’ll probably be dead anyway.
Second, fuzzy search. It’s a nice way to tell that I’m mash on the keyboard and the closest match appears in real time. It may sound trivial, but typos and forgetfulness are a burden when running commands multiple times a day.
I use an Emacs package, elfeed, which automatically labels incoming news for me. Using a long chain of tags, I can filter feeds by category, then save them with a handy name for easy recall. For example, I save the tags “+privacy +linux +yt” under the name “Linux privacy videos on YouTube”. To reactivate that filter, I lazily type in a close approximation of the name. This allows me to quickly switch between dozens of categories in seconds.
I also have a “read later” function which is a special “+bookmark” tag. Every day I scan my content feed looking for constructive content and save it for later. Whether it’s fun or informative, I always have a library of interesting things to work on, all neatly tagged for easy browsing. I can also save these as to-dos in notes for a project I’m working on, gradually building a learning roadmap. I can’t tell you how much it’s worth because it’s not easy to find great content up front.
Emacs probably isn’t for you, but that’s okay. What matters here is RSS, and there’s a client for everyone.
Ultimate control and better privacy
RSS provides only the content you choose to consume and nothing else. Social media gives you this illusion of choice, but a highly sophisticated, AI-based algorithm cherry-picks the content of your choice. These platforms use every trick book (#advertising) to keep you hooked and they exploit weaknesses in human behavior to achieve this. Emotionally charged content is one such trick and they spare no thought for widespread results. RSS is simple and much more direct and peaceful – no angry or divisive subjects; just useful information from people who aren’t trying to ruin my day or sell AI.
Social media has a lot of following, but RSS (per se) doesn’t. Privacy is a huge concern of mine, so I have to get content the way old users did – when the web belonged to its users.
People may not realize that they can consume some social media content (like YouTube and Mastodon) via RSS. I used the RSS Feed URL Finder web extension to get the feed URL for the YouTube channels I care about. I also use BlockTubewhich further limits my exposure to hazardous material.
Apps just for you
You don’t need to use Emacs
Emacs is not for everyone; in fact, for almost no one. But RSS is a web technology that has been around for a long time, and there is one a large list of existing customers. Most look and feel like email software, so you’ll probably feel right at home.
For websites that do not publish RSS, many have tried to solve this by using services and special programs to convert web page content to RSS format. Some solutions cost money, while others are free native apps—RSS.app is one such example, but there are many more. You point them to the web page you want and they often convert and convert it to RSS for the reader to consume.
7/10
- Brand
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Lenovo
- Operating system
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Windows 11
- CPU
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Intel Core™ Ultra 7 258V
- GPU
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Intel Arc Graphics 140V (Integrated)
Try Emacs. Or don’t! It’s your choice
My RSS needs may not match your needs. Most of the time people just want a familiar interface, whereas I love fast text searches. You’ll probably want to stick with a standard RSS client or a feed service with a richer feature set.
For me, RSS is all about convenience and security. Convenience, because I get everything in one place; security because I protect the data I consume. I want to be in control of the things that inform my decision-making and my opinions — I think that’s one of the most pressing issues in the digital world today, and I take it seriously.
