This is purely anecdote, but outside blogs read because they are posted here, reddit, or on twitter my blog reading dropped through the floor after Reader died. I tried one of the alternatives that allowed importing reader feeds (Feedly maybe?) but for some reason it did not stick for me and I fell away from the habit.
I wonder if this helped prop up mailing lists as an alternative which in some ways is better than blogs (gives you information on how to contact your regular readers) but also if it is literally ONLY email kills discoverability of old content.
* Intuitively, I would argue that RSS and reader were a tiny minority for blog traffic gen. Because both were used mostly by -nerds like me- tech-inclined minority. Blogs in their heyday were way bigger than just the tech bubble.
* I would probably bet on search referrals declining. Which, over decades of professional SEO chipping away at the top keywords and the long tail, having amassed the knowledge and direct monetary motivation to displace non-SEO-professional bloggers (or most everyone else, really). So the article kind of checks out for me.
* Twitter (to me at least) always looked like a dump and a direct opposite of a thoughtful blog post, I wouldn't be surprised if it's abhorred both by bloggers and their readers. But what do i know.
* A bunch of people who really enjoy creating content probably also moved on to Youtube where it's probably easier to make money/promote your content than the present-day blogs.
Google's interests are pretty evident and self-serving: RSS short-circuits both the browser (you can use an RSS reader) and Google's search engine. Both directly reduce advertising exposure.
Firefox killed default RSS features in 2018 "because they're hardly used and would take too much effort to modernise":
I wonder if this helped prop up mailing lists as an alternative which in some ways is better than blogs (gives you information on how to contact your regular readers) but also if it is literally ONLY email kills discoverability of old content.