Over on her newsletter/blog Citation Needed, Molly white is singing the praises of RSS feed readers.

What is an RSS reader?

What if you could take all your favorite newsletters, ditch the data collection, and curate your own newspaper? It could include independent journalists, bloggers, mainstream media, worker-owned media collectives, and just about anyone else who publishes online. Even podcast episodes, videos from your favorite YouTube channels, and online forum posts could slot in, too. Only the stuff you want to see, all in one place, ready to read at your convenience. No email notifications interrupting your peace (unless you want them), no pressure to read articles immediately. Wouldn’t that be nice?

RSS feeds have been around since forever, but they continue to provide a very underused alternative to the algorithm-controlled narratives and infinite data harvesting of corporate social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Substack, and all the rest.

I suggest you ditch them ASAP. Your life will thank you for it.

Many, if not most, websites publish an RSS feed. Whereas you can only follow a Twitter user on Twitter or a Substack writer in the Substack app, you can follow any website with an RSS feed in a feed reader. When you open it, all your reading is neatly waiting for you in one place, like a morning newspaper. And RSS is more of a one-way street from a privacy perspective, pushing writing out to you with less of your data flowing back to the publisher.

You can read Molly’s full post here: Curate your own newspaper with RSS.

As far as which RSS reader app to use?

• Molly recommends Inoreader.
• I recommend Reeder (iOS).