I firmly believe the Internet, and what it stood for, peaked with RSS.

RSS, or Really-Simple-Syndication, is (or was depending on your viewpoint) a means of allowing basically anything online to be collated into a single feed. You would visit the websites you loved, add their RSS feed to your preferred reader, and from then on be instantly notified of any new content, it was as simple as that. RSS primarily had its heyday during the Web 2.0 era (circa 1999-2010) when the freedom to do whatever you wanted with the information present on the Web was really the driving force behind a lot of new features and systems. This was of course before Social Media had taken off in the way we know it today and most of these concepts were siloed off into their own locked-down social-feeds.

Once Social-Media took its hold on the Web if there was something/someone you wanted to follow online you just added them to your Twitter feed or subscribed on YouTube; a fine idea until you decide you don't like the layout of the site in question or an algorithm decides you don't need to see the work of those you care about as often as you want (aka the curated timeline). I've already spoken before about my general disinterest with Social Media but it wasn't until somewhat recently that I decided to really start looking for alternatives - searching for a better way to interact with the Internet. I found my answer in RSS. I enjoyed the freedom to see sources as I wanted, the flexibility to move to a new reader if I wanted, the complete lack of advertising. It was hard to not fall in love with the service.

https://atthis.link/blog/2021/rss.html

War on RSS started in sync with war with forums and any independent communities. Apple, Google and other monsters do not want all this to exist.

Issue is that this monsters are ruled by enemies of the people and their fate is clear.