What RSS Needs

Browsers are user-agents — and so are feed readers!

Feed readers are an example of user agents: they act on behalf of you when they interact with publishers, representing your interests and preserving your privacy and security. The most well-known user agents these days are Web browsers, but in many ways feed readers do it better – they don’t give nearly as much control to sites about presentation and they don’t allow privacy-invasive technologies like cookies or JavaScript.

However, this excellent user agency isn’t well-defined, and we don’t even know if it’s consistent from reader to reader. We need a common understanding of what a feed reader is and what it isn’t,

The first rule of feed readers is we don’t talk about feed readers.

Now JavaScript (and privacy-invasive tech) will be coming for our feed readers.