[renegat0x0]

Agree to disagree.

I think many platform did support RSS, or API, but at some time it was dropped. It is not that hard to provide RSS. It is not like it has to be implemented from scratch. It is just dropped by platforms. There must be reasons for dropping. One may argue it is not worth it, but even to drop functionality there needs to be a decision from management. The management always think about money. Is RSS or API monetized correctly? Free? No? Then we drop it, because data from algorithms serving user contents can be easily monetized. Just follow the money, the oldest truth.

[jesuslop]

Not just no money in, but actual money out. RSS is a hole in user funnel inflow to platform.

[acdha]

Also, scraping was a problem for publishers: if your site was popular, copy-cats would show up republishing your work with minimal credit.

That said, this seems quaint in the modern era where trillion-dollar tech companies are doing that to publishers now, too.

[donohoe]

No. That wasn’t a concern with RSS for publishers. Most publishers have RSS still or feeds. Scraping index pages continues to be trivial.

[acdha]

Yes, it was a concern. You can say that some people made their peace with it but if you’d been there at the time, it was absolutely mentioned.