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---
title: "Using RSS to stop Youtube homepage-induced damage"
categories:
- blog
abstract: RSS is still the best way to follow on the interwebs
date: 2023-05-04T16:31:18+02:00
year: 2023
draft: false
tags:
- Youtube
- Odysee
- RSS
---
I, for one, am utterly guilty of being addicted to Youtube. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, or Mastodon have zero power over me, but YouTube? This service steals hours of my life. I am subscribed to multiple channels, but I also refresh the homepage regularly, hoping to find something.
{{<img-pull-right "rss.png">}}
Luckily it's easy to keep an eye on some channels while ignoring the algorithm completely using RSS.
Even though it's quite hidden, each Youtube channel has its own RSS channel: `https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel_id>`. Finding the channel id is not straightforward, but there are dedicated services out there like, like [https://commentpicker.com/](https://commentpicker.com/youtube-channel-id.php). So, you can find Level1Techs RSS feed under [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC4w1YQAJMWOz4qtxinq55LQ](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC4w1YQAJMWOz4qtxinq55LQ). Throw it into any RSS reader and voila. Unfortunately, shorts also appear in the feed.
But Youtube has a huge cost for the entire internet. It's the single most centralized repository (let's ignore OpenAI for a second) of content out there. Whenever possible, I try to use alternatives, like [Odysee](https://odysee.com/). Quite a few channels are already mirroring their uploads there. Odysee also supports RSS - `https://odysee.com/$/rss/<channel_name>`. This time you can take the channel_name directly from the URL of the Odysee channel, so System Crafter's RSS feed can be found under [https://odysee.com/$/rss/@SystemCrafters:e](https://odysee.com/$/rss/@SystemCrafters:e).
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