Rss - Tumblr Posts
very useful
how to keep following people when a major social platform implodes
(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)
First, get an RSS reader*-- here are some free options:
Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), Fraidycat** (browser extension/web), Thunderbird, Dreamwidth (web)
Android: Feeder
iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire
You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.
Some feed URLs for social media/other sites:
Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)
Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public
Mastodon: Use instance.url/@username.rss
Deviantart: Info here
Spacehey: Info here
Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="
Reddit: Info here
Lemmy: At the top of a community's main page, there's a small RSS link next to where you sort posts/comments.
Some additions thanks to @innumerablewounds:
Dreamwidth: https://username.dreamwidth.org/rss (users can opt out of this).
Ao3: Tags have an "RSS Feed" button.
Bluesky: Add /rss to the end of a URL.
Neocities: https://neocities.org/site/username.rss
Sites that won't work all that great:
Twitter: Feedbro and Fraidycat** may be able to use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) Public Nitter instances are dead/dying, and Twitter is now very hostile to pretty much anything that makes it easy to generate an RSS feed. For popular accounts, try this workaround using Google News...?
Instagram: Feedbro may be able to use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Check Feedbro's "scan interval" setting-- you could be rate limited or temporarily IP banned from Instagram if it makes requests too often!
Facebook: Feedbro may be able to use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs, but see the warnings for Instagram.
Threads: Come on.
Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).
*You can set up your subscriptions in one reader and import them into another by exporting an OPML file. **Fraidycat's intended use is following a lot of people across different sites, so it's well-suited for this post and I'd recommend keeping an eye on it-- but I didn't recommend it initially because I had some issues with it, and it hasn't been updated in a while. The last time I used it, it didn't have a setting to change how often it makes requests to websites, causing me to get IP banned from Twitter and Instagram...
how to keep following people when a major social platform implodes
(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)
First, get an RSS reader*:
Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), QuiteRSS, Raven Reader
Android: Feeder
iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire
You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.
Some feed URLs for social media:
Twitter: Feedbro can use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) (You can get a CSV file of all the accounts you follow using "Download a user's friends list" on Tweetbeaver)
Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)
Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public (WIP feature)
Mastodon: Use instance.url/@username.rss
Deviantart: Info here
Spacehey: Info here
Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="
Instagram: Feedbro can use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, Instagram doesn't have RSS feeds, and due to aggressive rate limiting on their part, it's not so simple to generate a feed URL.
Facebook: Feedbro can use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs.
(If you know an artist who exclusively posts to Instagram, you may want to gently suggest that they crosspost elsewhere...)
Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).
*You can set up your subscriptions in one reader and import them into another by exporting an OPML file.