I have recently been trying to implement, in my life, Fernando’s email inbox algorithm:

For each conversation in the inbox:

• If it’s spam, delete it.
• If it doesn’t need a reply, archive it.
• If I can reply immediately, reply and archive the conversation.
• If I can’t reply immediately, make a task to reply.*

https://borretti.me/article/inboxes-are-underrated

*I use Fastmail’s “snooze” instead of making a task somewhere else.

Fernando wonders why so few apps have inboxes that work with this algorithm:

This is the utility of inbox zero: it has no false negatives! If the inbox is empty, I know that all of my correspondence has been handled. If the inbox is non-empty, I know there is work to do.

I have been finding that an RSS reader is a great way to treat the web like an inbox.

Prompted by the Australian government tinkering with zany news media regulations a few years ago, I wrote about how RSS is a great way to consume the news (or, it would be, if news organisations wanted it to be):

https://crabmusket.net/australian-media-has-an-rss-problem/

Instead of being at the mercy of “the algorithm” implemented by various social media sites, I get to act out the “inbox algorithm”:

• Pick the site I’m in the mood for
• Skim the headlines
• If an article is short and I want to read it immediately, read it
• If I can’t read it immediately, send it to Raindrop to read later
• Mark all articles in the site as read

Newsblur, which I have been using for many years, makes this more or less the default experience. Though, I understand some RSS apps are more focused on a “feed”-like experience. Hearing this is what made me realise that Newsblur was letting me treat the web like an inbox, not like a feed.

One commenter on Hacker News describes the reason for feeds as:

the whole problem with chronological feeds, including RSS - chronological feeds incentivises spam-posting, posters compete on quantity to get attention. That’s one of the main reasons fb and other sites implemented algorithmic feeds in the first place

That is a problem with chronological feeds that mix content from all sources into a single view. But any good RSS app will break down posts by source.

When confronted with a high-volume source with hundreds of unread posts, I used to skim a few posts at a time then just mark the whole site as read. No point lying to myself about my ability to get through it all.

Other people use rating and intelligence systems to curate their own RSS feeds. Newsblur has this kind of functionality built in, but I haven’t tried to use it. These days, I just don’t tend to subscribe to high-volume sites via RSS (aggregators, whether user-contributed or traditional news organisations).

Here are some great recent RSS advocacy pieces:

• https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/
• https://andy-bell.co.uk/love-newsletters-youre-gonna-love-rss
• https://www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-rss/

Colleagues and friends who have heard of RSS often seem to think it’s “dead”, but I find most sites I’m interested in still have a feed.

Filed under: navel gazingattention economy