Face it, Facebook sucks at news. We all know that. This was all too painfully clear over the past year, with fake news stories being spread like wildfire throughout the social media. Facebook understands the issue and is taking steps to mitigate the problems. Whether or not these steps are enough is, however, questionable.
Personally, I’ve never been much of a Facebook fan. I use it since it’s pretty much a fact of life these days. Like it or not, it’s now the way to connect with people. My main issue is that Facebook decides what we should see in our feeds with precious few options to customize our preferences. (For the past few weeks, it seems that Facebook has decided not to put any items from my liked groups and pages into my news feed.)
But still, a lot of people get their news from Facebook. One study found that a majority of Americans get their news from Facebook. This is a frightening result considering the control Facebook has over what we read. What can we do?
A few days ago, I came across an article that reminded me of a protocol that has dropped in popularity over the past few years, but still has relevance: Why RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter For Tracking News.
RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary” (or “Really Simple Syndication”). RSS provides a standard way for news sites and blogs to present information. Using an RSS aggregator, you can view news and opinions from the sources you trust, not just the stuff Facebook thinks you want to read.
To get started, check out one popular RSS aggregator, Feedly. It’s what I now use to read news on my tablet. You can easily search for news feeds and select the ones you’re interested in. Alternatively, if you know the URL for a blog’s RSS feed, you can paste it into the search field and add it manually to your list. For example, to see the RSS feed for this blog, click here. If you want to read my ramblings as soon as they’re written, just add the URL of that page to your aggregator.
It’s time to take back control of your news feed. Don’t count on Facebook for news. Go take advantage of RSS aggregators, and view the news you want.
Cheers! Hans