Tutorial – FreshRSS

I can think of two really important things web users worldwide can do right now to preserve their sanity and make the world a better place. One is self-hosting their online life with Nextcloud [1][2]. The other, which might be even more urgent for many people, is to start getting online news from reputable media outlets through healthy RSS aggregators instead of from toxic social media. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to access RSS news feeds using FreshRSS [3], a multi-user open source RSS aggregator.

Why RSS

Really Simple Syndication, or RSS [4], is the most efficient, most self-respectful way to keep up with the day's news. Even if social media platforms weren't deliberately engaged in profiling every user for profits, social media would not be an adequate source of information: Scrolling endless flows of news that are almost submerged by advertising and toxic or irrelevant comments is not "staying informed." Luckily, RSS almost completely eliminates all those problems, in a very simple way.

Every website worth its name can automatically publish a list of the title, URL, publication date, and usually a short excerpt of every web page at a predefined URL. RSS clients can access these URLs, which are called "RSS feeds," periodically downloading any updates and aggregating all the information in one list, which users can then sort, search, or filter. Compared to the noisy, chaotic, and mutually incompatible atmosphere of social media, RSS feels like heaven, because you get the news straight from the source in a single interface, with almost no distractions, advertising, or tracking.

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