So I would argue that not only the shutdown of #GoogleReader was the primary cause for the #RSS demise, but also this was actually intentional, to wipe out from the general consciousness the awareness of the possibility and existence of decentralized, user-controlled forms of content distribution.
Several users have also remarked that RSS and #Atom feeds still exist, citing podcasts as primary application (in fact, it could be argued that it's not a podcast if it's not available via RSS).
I'll add to that that there's another form of media that still heavily employs #RSS, and those that follow me won't be surprised by my mention of this: #webcomics.
A lot of self-hosted webcomic sites build on #WordPress, so RSS availability isn't a big surprise, but I appreciate that (or rather, when) dedicated hosting solutions also offer the feature. (#ComicFury does it, and even #WebToons, while AFAICS #Tapas does not.)
I use a self-hosted #ttrss to follow feeds, and the largest active (and still growing!) category is comics. The vast majority of the blog feeds I (used to) follow are either dead (as the hosting site shut down) or inactive, last updated some 10 years ago, with few exceptions (among which, the feeds from my own <http://wok.oblomov.eu/>).
(And for what it's worth, I still visit the original posts, even when the full article is available in the feed itself.)
And of course, #Mastodon and other #Fediverse platforms also support #RSS, as producers, as consumers, or both. Several news sites still have feeds too, even though they don't always link to them in any user-visible part of the page, or even at all (secret URLs FTW).
I think this underlines the importance of stating what exactly is meant by “Google Reader (or whatever else) killed RSS”, and why the mindshare aspect mentioned above is so important:
The technology is still alive, it's still being actively (and passively) used. Feeds are still being produced by a surprisingly large part of the Internet, and still being consumed, but the general public has been made unaware of this, to push the centralized social network paradigm of the attention economy.
I believe there might be an opportunity now, with the Twitter takeover bringing attention to the #Fediverse and rekindling interest in #POSSE and #PESOS, to reverse the trend.
And yes, as individuals this can be extremely frustrating, because the feeling is that even knowing what would be best to support the #openWeb, there's the feeling that our choice have little effect if any. And in this context, the non-ubiquitousness of #RSS production and consumption “where people gather” often means a need to double or triple the efforts to reach out and connect with other people with matching interests, especially for those whose livelihood depends on it.
I do have a feeling that we're approaching another paradigm shift: as the GAFAM enshittification progresses at increasingly rapid pace, times are getting ripe for the emergence of new contenders to the search engines and social silos that dominated the last 15 years, and ironically the strongholds of the old web are more likely to survive this change than anything that moved to the now sinking giants.
I'm not as optimist as others about the #openWeb and #indieWeb making a return comparable to the days of glory of the blogosphere, but I do have feeling that it will be a bridge, and those finding their space there will have an edge in whatever the new paradigm is going to be, even if it currently seems like a cause lost in the mist of unfriendly User Agents and single-user apps.
I'll take this opportunity to renew my plea to browsers that claim to be in favor of the #openWeb that it's way past the time you put your engineers where your mouth is, and get back into leading the adoption of open technology, instead of blindly following the “leader” in their destruction of the same —and not just when it's a matter of hype.
(And yes, that was really aimed at @mozilla as an invitation to bring back #RSS support in #Firefox, and to openly promote #JpegXL instead of keeping it hidden in @FirefoxNightly, and more in general to go against everything that #Google's chokehold on the web currently represent. Support user choice instead of crippling it. Prove that you are different.)
@oblomov Have you checked the "Friends" plugin for WordPress, which is a kind of embedded RSS reader with some social interactions? It's still early of course...
@cybeardjm I don't use WordPress myself, so no. But the WP ecosystem is generally well oriented towards the open web. That Mozilla still hasn't restored RSS support in Firefox, instead, is worrisome.
@oblomov I understand. Yes WP already moved towards the Fediverse and ActivityPub.
Friends is not an AP plugin, but can be enhanced by it, which is interesting, when your WP blog is already an AP instance. https://wordpress.org/plugins/friends/
@oblomov
I use #ttrss as well I still have a number blog feeds believe it or not. Also news site rss. Some sites have nonobvious rss feeds like that paid newletter site you just add /feed on url end
@gordwait@mozilla@eniko There are federated platforms that can follow RSS feed, Friendica is probably the “biggest” name there. Mastodon could too, but AFAIK such a feature is deemed “out of scope” for the project.
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