As we countdown the hours to signing off for the rest of 2022, it’s “ruefully reminisce about RSS” day on Hacker News.
Nikki Usher predicts an implosion of Twitter under King Musk that leads to an explosion of email newsletters. As inboxes strain under the increased load, the PMC will rise up and demand an RSS reader so they can keep up with everything while also regaining control over their inboxes.
I’m skeptical.
In this sequence of events, it’s far more likely people suffering from email overload will spend five minutes learning about filtering rules to regain control over their inbox and be done with it.
My prediction for RSS in 2023 is it will look a lot like it did in 2022: It’ll be the plumbing for podcasts, moderately popular among techies over 30 who remember the Google Reader era, and posted about regularly on Hacker News as the cure-all that can fix our souls that have been poisoned by social media.