this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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This is a honest question. I have two RSS services hosted on my server, and I don't see the point. RSS is by nature distributed, and subscribing to my own server just makes the source of all news being the same. What is the advantage? What do people use it for?

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some jerk company (like Google) cannot suddenly discontinue my entire reader with all my feeds, because its mine, on my server. But because it's a web app, I can use it from any device, unlike a local app. After Google killed reader, That was just too annoying. Self hosted since.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

like Google

Too soon. I mean, it was ages ago but...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Preach! ʘ‿ʘ

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A self-hostes RSS reader? Probably the ability to read your stuff from anywhere without installing something. Like on your work PC... ;)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

That and sync. I wanna keep track of what I read already. Add to that functionality for saving favorites etc and you got a much better package overall.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me, it makes the clients disposable. I can reinstall the laptop, desktop, phone and be up and running in no time, without doing backups and preparation. Also it is easy to jump between clients.

The server needs to be backed up though

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Device agnosticism. Life is easier when it doesn't take ONE laptop or phone failure to destroy all your data.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Sync between devices. I only read RSS on one device so I don't need it either. Besides if you don't think a service is useful to you why do you host it?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

After years of using Feeder on my phone and some other random stuff on my laptop, I switched to FreshRSS on my server and the big thing is everything stays synced. My read and stared articles are all where they should be. I run fluent reader on all my devices and tailscale keeps me always connected to my reader so I can save articles on my phone when I don't have time to read them then read them when I get home on my laptop or tablet.

[–] axiomaticsquid 8 points 1 year ago

In addition to the other positives, I Miniflux with YouTube subscriptions. No ads and no tracking when set up with invidious proxies.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I used to pay Inoreader for the premium features they offer, but now I get them for free with FreshRss on my server. It's not exposed to the world but I can wireguard in when I need. Works great, basically maintenance free.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s crazy how they increased the prices each and every year. I switched to FreshRSS too. Amazing software

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yah, they're a good company and have a very good product, but I know how to do this on my own, thanks to the good folks at FreshRss, so...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I was an Inoreader user too, but I discovered Miniflux and cannot be happier 😉

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Miniflux is possibly the most important thing I self host. It tells me when software updates (basically everything on GitHub has RSS). It's also great to keep up with blogs that don't update consistently and also stay out of the "there are only three websites" bubble.

[–] gravitywell 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe you don't run anything worth subscribing to for yourself but if youre running services that have any kind of updates you want to notify people of RSS would be a way to do it. Any kind of blog can have an RSS feed of new posts, you could have a feed of the newest files uploaded to a site.

RSS readers like freshrss let you subscribe to other RSS feeds, so in that case they just work as any other RSS reader.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I use nextcloud to collate all my RSS feeds, I can then access them all from the nextcloud web UI or the mobile app

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have a self hosted freshRSS but I still just use the Feeder app 99.9% of the time. I guess I just keep Fresh as a backup in case the Feeder app ever goes down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it seems like such an unnecessary layer! Why login to your desktop, phone etc then have to login to a server also? I prefer to just open an application that has the feeds direct from source!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

When you realise that most of hosted ones make articles as read after 30 days it makes you wanna throw someone through the window.