Comment by colesantiago
5 hours ago
> I want to sit somewhere and passively consume random small creators content, then upvote some of that content and the service should show that more often to other users. That's it. No advertising, no collecting tons of user data about me, just a very simple "I have 15 minutes to kill before the next meeting, show me some random stuff."
In other words consume things for free and don’t support the small content creators work.
Sounds very similar to what the AI companies are doing, consuming RSS feeds and not paying it back to the small creators, but when we are doing it, it is okay because we are not AI companies.
hmmm.
The dream of consuming free content is really a throwback to the 90's way of thinking about an open web as a public space where anyone can freely access files that are published, as "published" meant "freely available." When YouTube made publishing something monetizable and guarded by DRM (look at all the trouble yt-dlp has been going through lately), that open web lost a lot of steam. Social media companies monetized discovery and surfacing through user data collection, and also undercut some of the desire to publish—once your basic info was on Facebook, having a personal web page became much less important. As having personal hosting became less and less the norm, publishing power concentrated in the hands of fewer companies (like YouTube) that were set up to monetize content and built the expectation of pecuniary compensation for "content creation," where the 1990's open web publishers were happy just being noticed and appreciated. The 1990's were a long time ago and are never coming back, because the past exists only as memory.
The spirit of the 90s is still here. There are still many, many people who are happy to have a space on the web and share what they’re passionate about or what is in their heads simply because they enjoy the process.
It’s not an all-or-nothing scenario. The two things can coexist. Some people will pursuit monetization, others are happy to share for the sake of sharing.
It comes down to individual choices.
You are putting words in their mouth. There is no reason why such an RSS app wouldn’t link to the original source instead of scraping it.
The app doesn’t need to be a central source of monetization for the creators either, that’s usually the source of all these problems. The app can monetize their aggregation and curation services as they wish, and the individual creators sites can monetize their contribution as they wish. Be it ads, subscriptions, donations or anything else, as usual.
AI companies hoover up the data, dump it in a giant pile and never tell you the source of it.
This extension literally just redirects you to the website. If the small creator has ads on that website, they're going to get paid. They're going to get the exposure.
Are you complaining about this project or RSS in general? Because your complaint applies to both. I loved the era of RSS readers. Maybe I never sent anyone money but it was never the point. That was a way to feel properly connected to an Internet stranger, to stay up on what was going on and what they thought. It doesn’t have to be financial remuneration at the end of every flow chart. "It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.
> That was a way to feel properly connected to an Internet stranger, to stay up on what was going on and what they thought.
I think too many people have forgotten that this is by far one of the best quality of the internet, especially the more personal one.
There does not need to be a financial exchange. Sometimes it’s enough to share content and read content others have shared.
When I run a red light it's wrong, but when a fire truck does it it's ok?
Really makes you think.
Poor attempt to refute my point.
When was the last time you supported a content creator that has an RSS feed?