I wonder if a lot of the conjecture about RSS – including the boring refrain of “RIP Google Reader :(” – comes from people who no longer read feeds because they don’t want to rather than the lack of a robust ecosystem? Meanwhile, everybody else is… still reading via feeds.
@simonwoods Or, also, perhaps those with a vested interest in keeping people in an ecosystem they can either control or manipulate to influence people? (Russian disinformation campaigns would have to work a lot harder if people weren’t “trapped” on Facebook/Instagram & Twitter, for instance.)
@smokey Makes sense. The silos were apparently quite valuable for those misinformation campaigns and so have some value so long as people stay there. Of course, the whole web itself is littered with all kinds of dangers so it is more difficult than ever to convince people to leave the apparent shelter of the silo. At this point we're well and truly in the territory of governance and civil behaviour at scale, the dynamics of which is somehow even more nuanced and fraught than the issues concerning the current state and future of the web.
@simonwoods Google Reader somehow got the social part right, which made it feel like other people were reading with you. Also, one of the only social platforms ever that caused me to make real life friends.