Online Echoes & My Need for Short Term RSS Filters

1/3/2024 11:30 am | : 3 mins. | Share to:

There's an almost yo-yo / echoing effect as people hear about something, then the time it takes them to make their content about it, before it then circulates again. And being as deeply online, I tend to be more aware of it as I see things very early and quickly, before they spread broadly. It's obviously reminiscient of traditional media, something happens, local news highlights it, then state news, then national, etc. Online is less directional, and more of a chaotic bounce between spheres people might see it or interact with it.

I posted about the kid beating Tetris on December 23rd. We're more than 2 weeks past that, and it's continuing to circulate and be reposted on various sites. An article about him on techspot.com is now in the top posts on Reddit for the day.

This echo is added to by the platforms which derive attention for upvotes / likes. I may already have seen something, but it still brings me joy, so I upvote it again. So perhaps Reddit and other platforms worsen this echo and noise.

For some things, this is an example of why I so badly want an RSS reader which has short term filtering built in. Once I see the Tetris story get a second post, I could add a short term filter and any posts which use the selected keyword(s) would be hidden. Ideally the feature would allow either a definite timeout (X days), or even better, how long since the last filtering. So if a post doesn't appear in my feed after, say, 3 days, the filter would expire.