I am leaving X.
Over the past few months, I’ve been backing up, deleting, or saving bookmarks, and clearing out DMs from my Twitter (X) account, @johnmayo. There were some lovely memories in there—long‑forgotten conversations and, amusingly, the discovery that I won tickets to a Ray LaMontagne concert… 15 years ago.
Over the past year, I’ve wound back my social media use on both X and Facebook. I’m increasingly tired of having my content selected for me by something else. I’d also like to leave Facebook, but I have too many “old people” on there with whom I’d lose that tenuous connection—so Zuckerberg has me in his clutches for a bit longer. I have a presence on Blusky and Mastodon but the social media withdrawal has impacted on my level of use on those platforms as I have not found my network engagement level.
I have, however, changed how I consume media by going properly old‑school and using RSS feeds much more.
When Bloglines shut down in 2009, I moved to Google Reader, and when Google sent that to the Google graveyard, I switched to Feedly. Feedly was fine, but I kept bumping against the 1,000‑feed grandfathered limit—although I was too lazy to do a proper tidy‑up and remove dead feeds.
One of the great advantages of RSS is how easy it is to move from one reader to another by exporting your OPML file. After tiring of Feedly, I moved to Feedbro, a browser extension for Chrome or Edge. OPML files are also great because you can share them with others. Bryan Alexander shared his OPML a while back, and I was able to add dozens of new feeds. Over the years, good folks online have shared their favourite blogs and podcasts—ironically on Twitter—which I added to the list.
I started Christmas morning with 1,800 feeds, now pared back to 1,480 removing duplicates and dead links. Like the old election slogan, a lot done. More to do
A regular tidy‑up of Feedbro throughout the day usually leaves me with about 400 posts to scroll through each morning and around 30 minutes of reading—content I’ve chosen to subscribe to. I’ve previously blogged about Raindrop, and one particularly cool feature is that Raindrop folders have an RSS option in the shareable settings. This has really broadened my scope on AI.
I’ve also leaned into using RSS feeds with Bluesky and Mastodon profiles, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. For Bluesky, simply open the profile page and add /rss to the end of the URL, then hit Enter to view the feed. Mastodon works slightly differently: open the profile page and add .rss to the end of the URL. However, if the profile name contains a full stop, the RSS link doesn’t seem to work.
In the end, stepping away from X isn’t a grand statement—it’s just a quiet return to a web that works for me. No algorithm, no outrage bait, no “For You” feed deciding what I should see. Just clean, honest RSS: fast, simple, and blissfully drama‑free. If you need me, I’ll be in my reader, scrolling through content I actually chose.