So as I’ve mentioned previously here and here, I intend on building a leftist RSS instance. Well, I have finally done it! Not without some learning along the way. I’ve created an instance called news.abolish.capital, which currently has three main communities, !china@news.abolish.capital, !latam@news.abolish.capital, and !pravda_news@news.abolish.capital.
I’ve ported over all the RSS feeds from lefty_news on ibbit.at, I’ve also removed as many rss feeds from ibbit.at that the bot commands would allow (some are still stuck). This was a real learning experience, and one that I think will help me with future projects for sure. If you want to supply new feeds for the site, you can put in a request at !Meta@news.abolish.capital.
This has been in the works for a little while now, but given the current situation with ibbit.at it seemed like a good time to break away from that site.
You can see the RSS feed list here. As well as the code for the RSS bot here.
Abolish Capital might expand into other sites and services; I have some other ideas floating around that I might want to experiment with. For right now, the front page of abolish.capital hosts the full text of the Communist Manifesto, you know, because I can! I view this as the start of a larger effort to build what I think is appropriately called The People’s Web or the Working-Class Web. A subsection of the Indieweb movement, built by working people for working people.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s one of the oldest ways of getting updates for things on the internet, and the fact that it’s mostly used for podcasts these days is a real shame. It’s a great way to get content that you want to see, without having to be subjected to algorithms or advertising.
This article goes into more depth, and gives a simple guide for how to get started using RSS feeds in 2025