Kill the algorithm in your head: Let's set up RSS readers and get news we actually want in 2026
We finally have the technology to present users with a chronological list of content. They said it couldn't be done.
It's really hard to find an image that captures the essence of RSS, okay? (Image credit: Clu via Getty Images)
Time was, entire social castes would be dedicated to divining the intentions of the gods. Chicken entrails, the flight of birds, the rolling of thunder—all this and more was used by ancient peoples befuddled by the randomness of life, in an attempt to impose some order on the world, some meaning on their triumphs and their suffering.
We've outgrown all that these days. In the place of arbitrary and distant gods we have arbitrary and distant algorithms: vast lattices of code that no one really understands, whose purpose seems to be to make the entire world more insane and more racist.
(Image credit: Bay 12)
Their workings are indefinable, their intentions obscure, and they probably determine a vast amount of what you watch, read, and listen to. I know they do for me. Apple News feeds me news, my YouTube home feed suggests videos, Spotify introduces me to the latest and greatest music generated by data centres the size of Idaho. I don't have to think about anything at all; it just comes to me.
It's kind of awful, really—a vast abdication of responsibility on my part. Well, no more. You and me, we're making 2026 the year of the glorious return of the RSS reader.
Keep it really simple, stupid
If you're young, the notion of an RSS (that's Really Simple Syndication, by the by) reader might essentially be Lostech to you. Let me briefly explain. Time was, we used to have the means to plug our favourite websites—you know, to pick one at random, something like PC Gamer dot com—into a little bit of software that would present you with a simple, chronological feed of content published to a website. Yes, the internet used to be good.
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)
The end of Google Reader in 2013 was more or less the death knell for that era of internet and that style of content aggregation—save for podcasts, which still rely on RSS to make their way to most of your listening apps of choice. Google's RSS app was far from the only bit of kit you could use to sub to a site, but it was a popular one, and in the wake of its passing more than a few sites started to let their RSS feeds lie fallow, sparking a cycle of decline.
