Are you more of an RSS feed guy or a Newsletter guy?

[lakes]

I've recently got back into using RSS feeds. It's very useful for keeping up with websites, the news and even certain channels on video sharing platforms like Youtube. I use it more for Peertube than Youtube though, since I already use Freetube & Newpipe forks for Youtube.
However I've found that with some modern news, they won't have an RSS feed at all or just have an xml for the "sitemap" that isn't even organized properly beyond the date. Instead it seems like a lot of modern news websites expect you to sign up for a newsletter or even start an account. It's to the point where the ones that do have a legitimate RSS feed often don't link it and instead, I have to put the domain name into my feed reader to find it. Granted, a lot of them seem to have an RSS feed, just hidden.
It sucks because I prefer feed readers. I don't have to give my email address. I can fetch my feeds when I want to instead of being immediately bombarded with media. I've also found that RSS feeds are useful for a lot of different stuff.
I already mentioned using it for indie websites, news articles, and videos, but what I didn't mention is that my feed reader can fetch Gemlogs over the Gemini protocol too. RSS Guard, my feed reader, also lets you set individual feeds to be over a proxy which is useful if you use I2P.
While I still use newsletters for sites that don't offer the option of using an RSS feed occasionally, I don't like them. Why? I end up only reading the headline, my email provider (tuta) often confuses the newsletter for spam if they send too many emails at once, and it can feel kinda annoying to open my inbox to bad news. But I can see why someone might prefer it since it's easy to forget to check an RSS feed, while newsletters just require you to open your email which most people already do.
Which do you use? Why do you prefer it and if you use RSS feeds, what's your preferred feed reader?

[Dan Q]

RSS. 100%. All the way. All the time.

I love RSS so much that if somebody offers a newsletter I want... then I convert it to an RSS feed. (There are services that can do this for you, but I just use my selfhosted OpenTrashmail server, whose inboxes all have RSS feeds as-standard.)

I love RSS so much that if a site doesn't have it, or doesn't do it in the way I like, I add it for them. Like how I've "fixed" BBC News's RSS feeds to be the way I (and many others!) want them, or like how I use XPath Scraping (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to use my feed reader even for sites with no feeds.

I use FreshRSS, and on any given day it's the first, last, and sometimes only place I go on the Internet. I cannot recommend it strongly enough: it's amazing.

Fun fact: a new feature's getting added to the next version based on a blog post I wrote!

[lakes]

RSS. 100%. All the way. All the time.

I love RSS so much that if somebody offers a newsletter I want... then I convert it to an RSS feed. (There are services that can do this for you, but I just use my selfhosted OpenTrashmail server, whose inboxes all have RSS feeds as-standard.)

I love RSS so much that if a site doesn't have it, or doesn't do it in the way I like, I add it for them. Like how I've "fixed" BBC News's RSS feeds to be the way I (and many others!) want them, or like how I use XPath Scraping (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to use my feed reader even for sites with no feeds.

I've tried doing something similar with the site, Kill The Newsletter, but I couldn't get it for work for me. (Maybe there were instructions I forgot to read 1st.) However I might look into OpenTrashmail cause I really want Reuters and The National to be RSS feeds. Thank you.

I use FreshRSS, and on any given day it's the first, last, and sometimes only place I go on the Internet. I cannot recommend it strongly enough: it's amazing.

Fun fact: a new feature's getting added to the next version based on a blog post I wrote![/font]

That's so cool. I'm personally sticking with RSS Guard, but if I think about switching, I might consider FreshRSS because it sounds cool.

[sunnyp4rk]

As long as I can read it with my daily email, then I like it. I really like that Thunderbird has an RSS reader because I already use it for email, so I transferred all of my RSS feed subscriptions there.

[ABlueRose]

I love RSS feeds! I am subscribed to some newsletters that don't have RSS, but I found RSS feeds a lot easier to manage and keep up with

[candycanearter07]

RSS. RSSGuard has been a really good program and the only issue is im now up to 300+ feeds

[fablefound]

similarly to abluerose, i have a couple of newsletters i still get either because trying to get them onto my rss feed was a headache, or they're irregular/enjoyable enough i don't mind the inbox clutter. trying to ease as much as i can onto rss, though! i have sage-like running on my browser and i do love just being able to poke in on my own terms.

[lakes]

RSS. RSSGuard has been a really good program and the only issue is im now up to 300+ feeds

I have the same problem. I'm not sure how to keep track of the amount of feeds. I have over 2,900 unread articles.

[candycanearter07]

I have the same problem. I'm not sure how to keep track of the amount of feeds. I have over 2,900 unread articles.

On RSSGuard at least, you can click on the root folder for an account and see how many it lists in the info tab. No idea how to do it for multiple accounts at once, though.

[RNotteLovesOwls]

i prefer RSS feeds. one, because i want to keep my inbox clear for socializing and client-communication purposes. two, because reading article content on an RSS reader is sometimes easier than doing so on the website itself, especially if the site is full of ad space. three, because if i don't want to follow a feed anymore, it's easy to just delete it; unsubscribing from and then deleting email newsletters can be a real hassle. four, because my friends and fellow bloggers prefer them, and thus it's an easy way to follow them. and five, because ATP i don't trust any decent-sized news site with my email address. if meta, google, discord, and reddit are fine with selling user data to the highest bidder, who's to say that the new york times isn't, either?

my RSS reader of choice is (the admittedly outdated) RSSOwl... because owls. who do you think i am?

[lakes]

On RSSGuard at least, you can click on the root folder for an account and see how many it lists in the info tab. No idea how to do it for multiple accounts at once, though.

Apparently I only have 156 feeds. Still a lot, but not as much as you.

[lakes]

and five, because ATP i don't trust any decent-sized news site with my email address. if meta, google, discord, and reddit are fine with selling user data to the highest bidder, who's to say that the new york times isn't, either?

it's funny you mention this because i've always suspected this is part of why i have an easier time finding rss feeds for independent smaller news websites than big name ones
it doesn't help that reuters hides theirs behind a paywall & now i find out the bbc doesn't have an official rss feed too from this thread
meanwhile with the smaller ones, the only one i had trouble with was this one lebanese news website i have to use a translator for and even then they had a sitemap.xml that's regularly updated at least

[lakes]

Update: I found out that Reuters does have at least one functional RSS feed (https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=site%3Areuters.com&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen).
It's google unfortunately. But at least, I don't have to choose between a newsletter and constantly checking the website.
There's also a lot of feeds for the National but for some reason, I didn't see them. (https://www.thenational.scot/rss/)