Content platforms (YouTube, TikTok, ...) are optimised for profit. As long as they rely on ad-driven incentive structures, they will compete for your time/attention. Turns out, the best way to capture your attention is to tap into that part of your brain that likes to mindlessly consume content. How can we fight that?
By carefully curating our own content. RSS is a simple web feed format that allows dedicated feed readers to read content from any site that supports it. Many blogs will support this.
Pro Tips
Many platforms support RSS feeds. I tend to view the source of the page and search for "RSS", "xml", "atom". If that doesn't yield anything, I turn to my search engine. If I ever come across something I really need that doesn't have an RSS feed, there are services that allow generating RSS feeds by comparing the HTML content of the site.
Examples:
- Youtube: visit channel home page and type:
window["ytInitialData"].metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.rssUrl - Reddit, top of the month:
h ttps://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/top.rss?t=month - GitHub feed: use the "view source" and search method