If I want to quickly pitch “you should follow X, Y, and Z using RSS because [problems with social media]” to people who have never heard of RSS, what readers should I recommend?
I want at least web (not self-hosted), Android, and iOS options. Native apps for Mac and Windows would be nice as well. Linux users probably already know what RSS is.
There absolutely must be a free option good for at least 25 feeds because unfamiliar tech is a hard enough sell without having to pay. I’ll grudgingly accept ads if that’s the tradeoff for something beginner-friendly.
I don’t think that RSS is a reasonable alternative for social media at all. Different use case for me.
I mean, I’d use it if I had a selection of known sources that publish content regularly that I like enough of to see all the content and have a website. Only a few sources actually meet that bar for me. Then, RSS lets me put a common interface on all of them, combines a list of new content.
I use something like Reddit or the Fediverse to take advantage of people finding useful content elsewhere, which is kind of a different use case.
I mean, you’re on social media here, rather than just following an RSS feed, so presumably RSS doesn’t replace social media for you either.
I’m coming at it from the opposite side; social media isn’t a reasonable alternative to RSS, but people often use it as such. RSS is as you say, for getting updates from specific sources without being at the mercy of a third-party’s recommendation algorithm.