Slashdot Mirror
Podcasting is Not Walled (Yet) (rakhim.org)
Rakhim Davletkaliyev, a software developer, writer and podcaster, recently launched two new podcasts. One of the things he was asked by people following the launches was "but how do I subscribe, it's not on iTunes/Google Podcasts?" He writes: Podcasts are simply RSS feeds with links to media files (usually mp3s). A podcast is basically a URL. And podcast clients are special browsers. They check that URL regularly and download new episodes if the content of the URL changes (new link added). That's it, no magic, no special membership or anything else required. The technology is pretty "stupid" in a good way.
Ever since tech companies started waging war against RSS, podcast distribution became visually RSS-free. What do you do to subscribe? Easy, just search in the app! For the majority of iOS users that app is Apple Podcasts, and recently Google made their own "default client" for Android -- Google Podcasts. It looks like podcast clients are similar to web browsers and just provide a way to consume content, but the underlying listings make them very different. Corresponding services are actually isolated catalogs. When you perform a search on Apple Podcasts, you aren't searching for podcasts. You are searching for Apple-approved podcasts. And if the thing you're looking for is not there, then... well, you get nothing.
Most Podcast clients still accept RSS. Apple Podcasts, iTunes, PocketCasts, OverCast, PodcastAddict. Google Play Music doesn't say anything explicitly, but you can just put RSS URL into the search field and it works. For now. I won't be surprised if these apps gradually and silently remove this feature.
Ever since tech companies started waging war against RSS, podcast distribution became visually RSS-free. What do you do to subscribe? Easy, just search in the app! For the majority of iOS users that app is Apple Podcasts, and recently Google made their own "default client" for Android -- Google Podcasts. It looks like podcast clients are similar to web browsers and just provide a way to consume content, but the underlying listings make them very different. Corresponding services are actually isolated catalogs. When you perform a search on Apple Podcasts, you aren't searching for podcasts. You are searching for Apple-approved podcasts. And if the thing you're looking for is not there, then... well, you get nothing.
Most Podcast clients still accept RSS. Apple Podcasts, iTunes, PocketCasts, OverCast, PodcastAddict. Google Play Music doesn't say anything explicitly, but you can just put RSS URL into the search field and it works. For now. I won't be surprised if these apps gradually and silently remove this feature.
Recently, Apple, Google, and Facebook have colluded to censor views with which they disagree by removing authors from their platforms. The populist right wing in particular communicates by podcasts, and Apple and Google recently removed some, including some very popular ones, from the podcast indices that their walled-garden apps provide. TFA higlights the lengths to which Apple and Google go to make their indices seem the only avenue for surfacing content to users of their default applications, although the underlying technology is in fact open and accessible outside those indices and apps. That openness provides an avenue for resisting censorship, but the viability of that resistance relies on users understanding something about how RSS works.
In a wider context, this is also important in the overall contest between open standards like RSS and the closed approaches of centralized tech. Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. despise RSS because it is impossible for them to monetize or censor and replicates much of their functionality. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are all built around the idea of a feed/wall/stream, which is basically RSS. The tech companies would love to kill off RSS and provide ad-filled, censored, feeds/walls/streams under centralized control instead of decentralized RSS feeds that anyone can publish. Hiding the RSS in podcast apps may work towards that goal.
registering his podcast with the normal services which delineate podcasts
Which services are these? Where can I find one?
Have gnu, will travel.
Do you know how many walled gardens there are for podcasts? I've helped a couple people list their RSS feed and I didn't post to anywhere near this number of services. If this were part of an open web, they would simply be indexed by search engines and no manual submission would be needed. You don't have to explicitly submit your web site to Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc, so why should podcasts be any different? Sure, you can prefer manually-submitted entries. But expecting every podcast to know of every directory is insane.
If this guy can't go to the trouble of registering his podcast with the normal services which delineate podcasts, I can't be bothered with tracking it down nor listening to it.
What if the "normal services" denied him listing because he held dissident political views that the "normal services" wanted to suppress? RSS is a decentralized technology that resists censorship; centralizing publication into the hands of a few "normal services" increases the risk of censorship.
The censorship has already begun.
If podcasting apps remove the ability to subscribe to unlisted RSS feeds, corporate control of one media channel will solidify, as will censorship. The last paragraph in TFA expresses that worry: Apple and Google not only control and censor their own podcast indices but also exert influence over app makers, and they could easily decide to kill off RSS subscription outside the confines of their own indices of approved podcasts as well as influence app makers to do the same.
A podcast client is a bit more than a web browser with RSS support. People are looking for more than that anymore in an podcast client. They want to be able to stream or download it. They want to be able to speed up / slow down playback. They want to support both audio and video podcasts. They want cross-device placement/bookmark sync. They want intelligent downloading so they don't blow their data caps (particularly with cell data). That's a bit more than just a web browser with RSS support.
But I do agree with you on the big players trying to take a chunk out of RSS podcasts and RSS in general. I talked about that in https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10677653&cid=54511965
But here is the thing, content rules. If people can't get the content that they want on big players app they want, they'll use a different app. Encourage you're content creator to stay platform agnostic. This doesn't let the draconian big players isolate content. If the big players want that content, force them to add support for open standards like RSS in their apps.
No good deed goes unpunished.
OOH OOH!!
I got it...
Podcasts on the Blockchain!!!!
YISSS!!!
No, the author means "visually." If you look at Apple's Podcasts app for iOS, for example, you will see a "search" function that surfaces (approved) content for those looking to discover new podcasts. There is no visual indication--no icon, no label, no indication whatsoever--that you can hand the app a RSS URL that you have independently discovered and subscribe to its feed. You can, in fact, subscribe that way by clicking on a pcast:// URL in Safari or another app, but you have to do that from outside the Podcasts app. Visually, by just looking around in Apple's Podcasts app, you would never discover that you can subscribe to RSS feeds not sanctioned by Apple. If Apple removed that feature, users who did not know it had been there would never learn that it was taken from them and that they were suddenly locked into a censored catalogue of podcasts with no chance to hear dissident podcasts. The author seems to want Apple, Google, et al. to expose RSS subscription visually so that users know that they can enter an RSS URL not listed in the proprietary search index and subscribe to feeds beyond Apple and Google's power to censor.
Google Reader closing not ringing any bells? Firefox removing built-in RSS support? Slashdot posting about how RSS was dead?
Yep, just ask Alex Jones.....
I mean, I'm not a fan of his, it was a bit of a whack job channel on YouTube, but wow....he just got booted.
Strangely, however.....I've not see a lot of other high visibility channels on either side of the spectrum that were as bad if not worse than AJ get booted.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
People paywall themselves by buying into the Google or Apple or Facebook ecosystem. The rest of the Net is still out there and working just fine, even if most people aren't using it.
I don't respond to AC's.
RSS and things built on top of it like Podcasts are good for users. But the technology is bad for advertisers. If you see criticism of RSS, look closely at where it comes from. If it comes from someone trying to sell you something, take their advice with a grain of salt.
It's been said before that advertisers and ad brokers are at a disadvantage with RSS. But Web 2.0 developers that wish to sell frameworks and services are also at a big disadvantage too. You'll see self-described web experts that disregard RSS as being primitive, limited, or no longer relevant. But I have to wonder if this has more to do with such "experts" trying to compete with a free and established technology.
Still, I believe it is inevitable that RSS will die. Take Usenet newsgroups for example, that is basically dead, at least in terms of being a widely used communication hub as it once was. What replaces it? A fractured set of isolated web forums (that includes /. and Reddit). Instead of having a huge global network of message boards, we have tiny isolated communities, and even that medium is dying out. Replaced by the top post schemes of Facebook groups, Google+, and Twitter.
Why did Usenet die? There are many factors, but one of the big ones is that it's hard to get ad revenue from running a news server and easy set up on a web forum.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Podcasts are a different beast - one podcast doesn't really "link" another.
There are well-documented RSS publishing standards using <link rel="alternate" ... /> in the associated web site's HTML - you don't link one podcast to another. You link the podcast to its related web site, probably the domain the actual feed is on.
Perhaps if you own a website you can link to the podcast and thus get into the big directories through normal webcrawling, but if you don't publicize it, it won't get picked up.
Podcasts don't exist without a web server to serve the RSS feed over HTTP. That's likely going to be a web site right there. And if you don't link to your own podcast from your own web site (or if a podcast as a service system doesn't do the same), then you are doing something wrong.
But that can take days, weeks, months, or years depending on how high traffic the sites that link to your content are. Try it. Set up a website and see how long until Google etc., will index it. If it's not linked anywhere, they likely won't even notice.
Well that just goes back to the beginning. Still, the point is that it eventually gets found. If from nothing else than from the domain registry being public. You can manually submit to a walled garden, but automated crawling would drastically increase the amount that is easily discoverable.
I've not see a lot of other high visibility channels on either side of the spectrum that were as bad if not worse than AJ get booted.
Got any examples?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.