This is the last post from my website I'm going to make on this site. I made a simpler explanation here on cohost the other day, but now here is a more in depth post about it. Here is a direct link to the post on my website where things are formatted a bit better. I'm also at work posting this, so if something looks off or wrong please let me know.
Originally Posted 9/11/24
For the love of glob please set up a website with an RSS feed
someone please write a guide on the easiest way to maintain a super barebones RSS feed
I want all of the artists I care about to have an RSS feed
please, fucking please
You want "decentralized" internet? You want things to not rely on one rich asshole ruining things for everyone?
RSS feeds. It's fucking RSS feeds. RSS readers still exist, you can find one you like. There's tons of them. Yes, setting up a website, even a very basic one, is a big technical hurdle. I'm sorry, take it up with the rich people. If you're on cohost you have friends that are willing to help. I'm not that friend, I've avoided making a website for eons. But someone will help.
All RSS feeds are is a structured way of going "hey here's all of the posts on this web site". So instead of going to each website, a program can just load all that data in at once. It's really fucking simple.
and yes most people are not going to post hog on their own website and that sucks, I don't have a solution for general hogposting.
I agree with OP, RSS Feeds are great and a good way to go for a decentralized web.
So, if you have a spot to host an RSS feed, this is dummy simple. So simple that when I first saw it I was like "this can not be this simple" but, it is. Below are the steps. It looks long, but I promise a lot of this is just copy paste each time you want to make a post.
Edit 9/9/24 @891 internet time: I'm planning on writing a more in depth step by step tutorial later today or tomorrow I'll link here once it's done.
Edit 9/11/24 @657 internet time: Here is the more in depth post on cohost about how to create an RSS feed. Here is the direct link for the article on my site where it's formatted a bit better.
Thinking about this a little more, I think one of the things that keeps people on Twitter even after the ads are hateful, is the illusion of a marketplace of ideas. Stay to debate the Nazis with facts and logic, or they'll "win!" Maybe even buy a blue check of your own so you don't lose visibility against them! We can't let them take this ground!
Except it's fucking taken, because this game isn't actually played with pure ideas and the left didn't lose Twitter through a failure of persuasion. The Nazi Bar Analogy does not describe a situation where the bar is owned by a Nazi but the bartender keeps working so he can explain to the customers why this is Bad, Actually.
I'm not really concerned with the money - yes you shouldn't be making ad revenue for these assholes, but it's running at such a massive loss that your fractional-cent view of an Epoch Times ad is not going to turn that around anyway. It's more that you shouldn't continue to legitimize Twitter as the "public square" where the best ideas win. Doing so is playing along with the conceit that Nazis somehow won the conversation, instead of the reality that they bought it.
Anyway I'm seriously thinking about how to put together a public pressure campaign to get schools, government offices, other such "neutral" institutions off Twitter. It's well past time to stop being normal about "well yes the Weather Channel has an account on a Nazi site, but don't worry, they only use it to post about the weather! 😊"
I wish there was an easier way for places like libraries or government offices or other small businesses/ organizations to get messages out there to people. Often with the small businesses or local government offices I've interacted with it's just one of their employees making posts. Not someone trained in any sort of computer skills. And so Twitter and Facebook are great options because it's about as easy as you can get to put a message out there and get people to see it.
But Twitter and Facebook also suck, and seem to me like they're going down the gutter. And so then where do these people go? Can go back to hosting their own websites, and making posts there. Not terrible, though there's a fair amount of small businesses I know that don't even have their own website. Also it then becomes a pain for people to be informed from multiple locations at once.
Which then brings me back to RSS feeds, and how I wish there was a really simple way for people to simply make posts to an RSS feed. Cohost/ Tumblr are honestly the closest things to that given profiles have RSS feeds by default I believe but Tumblr feels like a weird spot for official business and Cohost I think is slightly too complex for what I'd expect an average person to use (though not by much).
So I didn't hear much about alternatives to WordPress here, and given Wordpress is going to start selling off user data, I've decided to try and code my own site using neocities. It's going okay so far, but my biggest concern is I'd like there to be a RSS feed, and I'm worried that'll end up being a pain. If anyone has any suggestions for either coding your own site or how to make an RSS feed, I'm all ears
