Zombie Google Reader
On AI slop, Bluesky marketing gimmicks, and the tragedy of losing public services like Google Reader
Aaron Ross Powell proposes that the people behind the AT Protocol that makes Bluesky function ought to use their technology along with RSS to bring back the functions that made Google Reader popular with journalists before Google heartlessly killed it in 2013. It may not have been a money-maker of any serious note, but it was a very useful public service, allowing users to organize and follow streams of updates from many different websites through a known, cloud-accessible platform.
■ The community value in Google Reader was that it created an organizational structure that resisted some of the drawbacks of disseminating news and information via social media as we see it today.
■ There was no algorithmic interference; users saw what they chose for themselves. There was no immediacy bias; Google Reader kept track of unread updates and let the user decide when to acknowledge them as “read”. There was no intrinsic reward for pushing out loads of volume just to achieve visibility; by organizing and labeling feeds, the user could impose their own editorial preferences instead of rewarding whoever posts most often.
■ No credible or reasonable observer can look at the way social-media algorithms, shameless clickbait, and AI slop dominate the attention economy today and think that we’re better off.
■ In the process of shutting down, Google Reader’s own outlet recommended some alternatives, but the shutdown both dismantled the meticulous cultivation many users put into organizing their feed readers and smashed the critical mass that had developed around RSS feeds. Claims of “declining usage” notwithstanding, the service still offered lots of value to influential users (like journalists, as noted by Powell).
■ Nobody can or should force private businesses to engage in unprofitable activities, but there remains something to be said for firms that provide public services without getting hung up on how much money they make. Some tasks can only be done at scale by institutions with the internal capacity to get big things done -- or, like Google, the massive customer reach to turn niche interests into sustainable products or services. From time to time, we should offer more of a public cheer for those firms that disregard the siren’s song to optimize everything and continue providing a good or service because it’s the socially good thing to do.