[Zak]

The phones part is a red herring here. Phones work fine for reading text.

Video outcompeting text as a mainstream medium for both information and entertainment is as old as television. Youtube would be a more reliable way to make money than a blog in 2026 even if it was primarily consumed on TVs or PCs.

[coldtea]

>The phones part is a red herring here. Phones work fine for reading text.

Not as "fine working" as a book or a magazine or even a PC - not with 10 other districtions available in the form of different apps (and sending notifications), and not with that small of a screen.

Is that really controversial?

[mbonnet]

Yes. People don't want to go out and buy or borrow physical writing, or lug around a laptop, if they don't have to.

[heavenlyblue]

Your post is a red herring, some platforms simply replaced bespoke blogging websites. How would I, without any special services, consume multiple blogs today? It's so much easier with instagram/social media.

[xp84]

> consume multiple blogs today? It's so much easier with instagram/social media

I beg to differ. Follow 12 “people” on Insta and you’re just telling the algorithm you’re into parent stuff, or fashion, or makeup, or cars, or attractive women, or attractive men. It’s not like even 50% of what they serve you will BE those 12 people you followed. Most of what you get will be related to the same niches, but it’ll be from randos and AI instead.

It’s nothing like how simple RSS, Google Reader, or even Flipboard in its original iteration, made it to follow a bunch of specific “creators.”

[shant_extry]

I think the "randos and AI" is a significant part of the problem. Despite finding what you want (just speaking personally) I like the idea of supporting a creator and knowing that that creator is genuinely interested in the content they're producing. Not to put down someone who is trying to make some money out of it, but a creator who focuses too much on following trends might lose the "micro-niches" that some part of their audience might be interested in following them through.

[heavenlyblue]

Yeah but nobody uses RSS, which universe are you living in?

I love the idea of RSS yes.

[amarant]

I use RSS, it's great! Why aren't you using RSS?

[AlienRobot]

RSS.

[realityfactchex]

Correct.

It does not require a "service" to consume multiple blogs efficiently, just simply "software" (an app will do).

The below RSS readers pretty much do their job and get out of the user's way. What's amazing is the sheer number of RSS readers that people choose to use; there are so many, people find ones that they personally like.

On desktop: Vienna https://www.vienna-rss.com/

On iOS: R2SReader https://apps.apple.com/us/app/r2sreader/id1608635613

Of course, if one wanted to use a service (or run one oneself), for features like syncing, then that is possible too.

But the basic setup remarkably simple, easy, and useful by itself IMO.

[heavenlyblue]

None of that matters since instagram has more users etc. Jesus, the question is "why blogs disappear" - they disappear because users don't care about the value proposition of your RSS app. Most of them are quite shit anyway - little commonality in terms of styling etc.

[AlienRobot]

That's a completely different demand.

The question was "How would I, without any special services, consume multiple blogs today?"

You can do that with RSS.

Now you are saying it doesn't matter because everyone is on Instagram. So you aren't consuming "multiple blogs" in the first place, you're just consuming multiple Instagram accounts.

Keep in mind that nothing stops Instagram from providing RSS feeds for each user account.

You could literally just tell people to stop using Instagram and use Tumblr instead and the problem would solve itself. Tumblr hosts photos, photos albums, and videos, including blogs of several photographers. Tumblr has RSS feeds for each blog. You don't need to have a Tumblr account to follow blogs on Tumblr, you can just put them all into your RSS app and be done. You don't even need a separate RSS app. Vivaldi, a web browser, has an RSS client built-in.

Reddit has RSS feeds. Youtube has RSS feeds. Wordpress has RSS feeds (this is 50% of blogs, essentially). Mastodon has RSS feeds. Bluesky has RSS feeds.

There is nothing that we can do if people deliberately choose to go into a walled garden, but the open gardens still existand you have the full ability to use those instead.

Maybe if more people understood the value proposition of RSS's, they would have more reason to stop using Instagram and move.

[heavenlyblue]

I know about RSS, do your users know about RSS? Does a gradpa from midwest looking for a steak recipe care about RSS?

[inigyou]

We did have that. What was Mythbusters if not a YouTube show?