TL;DR: I switched to FreshRSS for self-hosted RSS feeds and Medium for high-quality articles.
Why I Left Google News for FreshRSS and Medium
I am sure social media has some positives, but if you listen to our podcast you may know the frustrations I have with the concept in general. I am old enough to remember a time when the internet was used for information and hobbies. The microblogging and mass communication utility of social media is a valid use-case. What I don’t like is just about everything else.
I can do without see content aimed at going “viral”, influencers, and the myriad of cat videos, but that’s just me. Case in point I had to recreate a Reddit account because there are some developers that take advantage of the platform’s infrastructure to provide a channel for users to communicate with them. It wouldn’t be my choice, but yet here we are and I find myself on Reddit several times a day for geek stuff.
For any developer out there reading this, I would visit a forum. I repeat, I would visit a forum.
The Problem with Google News: Clickbait, Ads, and Irrelevant Content
I like to stay current events and since I don’t have a traditional social media presence, Google News fit what I was looking for. I could select my sources and get updated on my interests in one app (unfortunately, on a desktop, you have to open a browser—arrrgghhhhh). Well, over the last year, the experience has only gotten worse. I don’t know why or why, but it was more than the sponsored items showing up in my feeds. Every time I opened the app there was clickbait titles (frustrating) and shit from the Times of India (not relevant to anything I am interested in or culturally aware of) even though I kept telling their algorithm I was not interested or blocked the source.
I am aware of how to prune my feed and went from doing this twice a year to once every three months. I understand Google has gotten worse, not only by injecting Reddit results into the page, but the increase of sponsored results in the first 20 results. It’s exhausting.
So with my requirements, I started working on my solution.
Why Paying for Quality Content Improves Your News Experience
I know there are many people who may not I agree with this, but I am okay with paying for content. If you were to ask me, media companies should have done this a long time ago. By not doing adapting, newspapers and televisions stations put themselves in a bind, one which they have no way of getting out of financially. I want current and relevant content and if you can do that, I will more than likely pay you (if that is the only way to get the information).
I have been paying for more software (especially from indie developers) over the last few years because I believe large corporations are no longer the ones providing the best software, and yes, I’m biased. I am now aligning along the same lines with online content. I also noticed when looking for technical information that Medium kept showing up, so I now have a subscription and they might not be the only one.
How to Set Up FreshRSS for a Personalized News Feed
For everything else, I don’t want to go to a myriad of websites, but if there was a way to aggregate RSS feeds, that would provide a “Google News” feel. In my past life, the team I worked with used Feedly, but I don’t think it is worth $60 per year and their free plan is too limited. I looked around for a self-hosted OSS solution and came across FreshRSS.
The instructions for installing FreshRSS on my Ubuntu server were fairly straightforward. Below is the base conf and the SSL after securing it with certbot.
freshrss.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin your-email@example.com
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/FreshRSS/p/
<Directory /var/www/html/FreshRSS/p>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo Indexes Limit
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/freshrss_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/freshrss_access.log combined
AllowEncodedSlashes On
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>
fresh-le-ssl.conf
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin your-email@example.com
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/FreshRSS/p/
<Directory /var/www/html/FreshRSS/p>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo Indexes Limit
Require all granted
</Directory>
AllowEncodedSlashes On
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/freshrss_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/freshrss_access.log combined
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
Best RSS Reader Apps for FreshRSS on Desktop & Mobile
Clients
This is the final component in my setup. I need to be able to browse the news at my leisure whenever and wherever I’m at. One thing I like about Google News is accessibility, but when I am at a desktop/laptop I don’t necessarily enjoy having a tab open. I am so over web apps, but that is for another time.
Desktop
Reeder Classic (macOS - $9.99/iOS - $4.99)/Vienna RSS (macOS) - Both applications are good, but Reeder (Classic) looks better. This is not to discredit the team at Vienna, but I like software that looks good and clean and this is where Reeder shines.
The developer has updated Reeder to a new version, but there is one problem. You cannot add your FreshRSS account, but you can subscribe to any feed via RSS or OPML provided by FreshRSS. I missed this and paid the $10 for the annual subscription and had to go back and purchase Reeder Classic. The developer says they will continue the development of the classic version into the future and as of the time of this article the latest update was in December 2024.
Mobile
Readrops and FeedMe - Android - I tried FeedMe first and I like it, but Readrops syncs so much faster so this is the one I am using. I plan on donating to the developer so they can continue development.
What do you think about Google News? Have you tried FreshRSS or another alternative? Share your experience in the comments!