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Social media in 2025 is…complicated. It can still be fun and informative, but it takes a lot more effort to get there. There’s engagement bait, tons of ads, and “suggested” content you didn’t ask for around every corner. Thankfully, there’s an old internet standard that can cut through the noise.
What Happened to Social Media?
It wasn’t always like this. In the beginning, social media was a much simpler place. Your feed was just a chronological list of posts from the people and pages you followed. You saw what your friends were up to, in the order they posted it. There was a time when it actually did feel like the “digital town square” that so many people have talked about.
Then came thealgorithms. Platforms realized this was the trick to keep you scrolling for longer. They started to hide posts from your friends and replace them with content they thought would “engage” you more. Your feed stopped being a window into your friends' lives and became a machine designed to keep your eyes glued to the screen. Suddenly, you weren’t seeing what was new—you were seeing what the platform wanted you to see.
Another big shift happened when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X. Many people who were unhappy with the changes and the direction the platform packed their bags and left. The problem was, they didn’t all go to the same place. Some went toThreads, some toBluesky, and others toMastodon. This exodus fractured communities and many people’s following lists.
Now, AI is complicating things even further. It’s making it even easier for platforms to curate your feed, but it’s also being used to create hyper-realistic fake content and misinformation. You have to be more vigilant than ever, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s just another piece of AI-generated slop. All of this is to say that social media has become a tiring and frustrating experience for many people.
Remember RSS?
Back in the distant year of 1999, a little thing calledRSS(Really Simple Syndication) arrived on the internet. It was a way to get content from multiple websites in one feed. Sound familiar? Well, RSS didn’t go anywhere. It’s still available on the vast majority of websites. Instead of having a social media algorithm dictate when you see content from your favorite sources, RSS puts you back in control.
Unlike social media sites, which almost all require you to use official apps now, there are tons of RSS reader apps to choose from, and they all work a little differently. Some are simple, likeFeedly, and they just show you the new articles. Others, likeInoreader, are more powerful and let you sort, tag, and organize your content. No matter which one you choose, you’ll find that it’s a much more peaceful way to consume information.
So, how do you get started? Most websites still have an RSS feed. You just have to find the RSS icon or a link that says “RSS.” Once you find it, you’re able to copy the URL and paste it into your RSS reader (here’s the link for How-To Geek). Some apps, like Feedly, will even let you search for a website and add it automatically. Once you have a few feeds added, you’ll be surprised at how quickly your reader fills up with content. It’s a great way to stay up to date on the stuff you actually care about.
You don’t even have to give up social media to switch to RSS. Bluesky and Mastodon support RSS feeds for user profiles, and there arefree servicesthat allow you to generate an RSS feed from a social media profile. The cool thing about this is you’ll see the posts in chronological order again. Take that, algorithms!
Whether you like it or not, there’s no denying that social media is very different from what it used to be. There’s more noise and less of what you actually signed up to see. Despite all the mess, it can still be fun and informative if you’re willing to do the work.
But if that’s not for you, RSS is a decades-old internet standard that still works on the vast majority of websites. It cuts through the noise and puts you back in control of what you see. RSS is a much more peaceful way to get content from the internet, and it’s something you should at least try.
