
Reuters killed their RSS feeds? - antpls
https://www.reuters.com/tools/rss
======
marban
99% of times it's just an error on their end and they eventually come back.

Why: I've created popurls fame back in the days (now hvper.com) and I can tell
you that this would be the first prominent case that a major outlet would
eventually give up on offering a feed. RSS is alive and kicking and its death
is just something the tech community loves to agonize over and over again.

~~~
antpls
My experience diverges from yours. Reuters feeds have been highly reliable
over the last 3 years for me, with near zero downtime. There were at least one
new entry per hour, almost 24h/24, but it can go up to 5 new entries per hour.

This is not a small "hiccup", this is a total blackout for almost a day now

Meta : HN doesn't let me downvote your comment, that doesn't seem very fair.

Edit : I invite everyone to look at webarchive :
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191029165306/https://www.reute...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191029165306/https://www.reuters.com/tools/rss)

The tools/rss page went offline October 29th 2019, which seems to indicate a
planned shutdown of the RSS prepared months ago. Possibly, they delayed the
shutdown with covid19 to now

------
jmsflknr
Still showing up on RSS apps and populating new entries.
[https://imgur.com/a/GiE37KC](https://imgur.com/a/GiE37KC)

~~~
dang
Ok, I'm going to downweight this thread for now. We can revisit the story if
it turns out to be true.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
antpls
Hi dang. The feeds are _not_ populating for about 24h now, but any rss readers
that fetched the last news from 24h ago will still show the last news from 24h
ago (like in the imgur picture). With all my respect, I would agree to change
the title to add a question mark, but not to downweight the fact that,
intentionally or not, reuters killed their rss feeds for 24h now, and some of
us are impacted, and they would like to share their experiences and opinions.

~~~
dang
Ok, but the problem is that then this becomes an "is down" story, as in
"Reuters' RSS feed is down". Those tend not to be a very high quality category
of submission, and it's unlikely that a story with that title would have shot
to the front page.

Rather it's the sensational they-killed-RSS! aspect of the story that
attracted attention, because it ties in with the generic topics of RSS-
lamentation and web-nostalgia which are perennially popular here (plus the
word 'killed' evokes indignation, which invariably attracts upvotes).

I'm not mocking those feelings—I share them! I just think there's a binary
outcome here: either Reuters is truly killing their RSS, in which case we can
discuss that once we know it; or (more likely) this was just a bug somewhere,
and that is not SNI (significant new information) which could support a
substantially different discussion. For more on SNI, see
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment).

Actually, the 'bug' interpretation does relate to the RSS-lamentation topic in
a more subtle way. Software that's low-priority never gets as much maintenance
attention. Perhaps someone made a change that broke the RSS feed, but no one
noticed because they didn't test that.

~~~
no_identd
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598724)

------
kmstout
I sent an online support request pointing out the problem (as though they're
not aware) and politely asking when it would be fixed. Assuming the reply
window for this thread is still open by then, I'll post any response here.

~~~
stagger87
Surely there is a better approach than a passive aggressive support request?

~~~
burkaman
I don't think it's passive aggressive. It could actually just be a mistake.
I've emailed (admittedly much smaller) news organizations before when their
RSS feeds went down, and received a response and a reinstated feed.

I wouldn't bet money on it coming back, but if this was an intentional move I
might have expected them to replace the page with "Sorry, no more RSS, try our
app!" or something. They are also still linking to the feeds at the bottom of
many pages, like this one:
[https://www.reuters.com/tools/mobile/us](https://www.reuters.com/tools/mobile/us)

~~~
iso1631
If nobody complains, then they'll know nobody really cares about it.

------
sashainsydney
Confirmed: Reuters closed their RSS down. Not a good look, imho.

Leo, Jun 23, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC: Hello,

Thank you for reaching out and we apologize for the inconvenience. We are
shutting down the current iteration of the Reuters.com global editions RSS
feeds as part of our larger strategy and as part of better experiences we have
in store for Reuters.com.

However, if you require the service, we suggest that you contact our Sales
Team on the link provided below:

[https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-
us.html](https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-us.html)

Kind regards,

The Reuters.com Team

------
vvillena
The death of RSS is the death of the federated web model where users view and
consume the content they want to. Modern alternatives like Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram do not serve users in the same way. Users happily consume the
content the platform feeds to them, without much say in it. It's an eerie
return to the pre-Internet days, where the only choices a consumer had were to
change the TV channel / radio dial / newspaper. An illusion of choice in which
users are disempowered.

~~~
forgotmypw17
I think this is only a short-term effect. In response to things becoming more
locked down, more and more "info liberation" projects will take root, and in
the end the information will just gradually all leak out and end up outside
the prison wall, in compatible, accessible formats. Then, eventually, even the
sources of the information will switch to publishing it in the libresphere,
because at that point the best audiences will be there too.

~~~
jxf
I hope you're right, but this is an extremely optimistic view that does not
have much historical precedent.

~~~
gagege
Looking at all of history, I'm very optimistic. Going way back to Cuneiform
and the printing press, and the internet itself, they all point to a general
principle of the breaking up of monolithic information sources over time. It
might take a while, but it'll happen with the internet too.

~~~
neverspecial
What you describe in the digital age will be an illusion of freedom. Delivery
of the bits will still be locked down tighter than ever. Delivery allows
filtering. The future is very bleak.

------
Rumperuu
I submitted a support ticket on Jun 20, and received a reply this morning:

‘Hello,

Thank you for reaching out. Please be informed that we've already discontinued
RSS Feed on Reuters.com. If you require the service, we suggest that you
contact our Sales Team on the link provided below:

[https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-
us.html](https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-us.html)

Kind regards,

The Reuters.com Team’

~~~
lavanderson
I got the same reply, word for word, for a similar inquiry.

------
agaase19
There should be a way to integrate RSS with a payment model. People should be
free to get content they want in any app of their choice based and still be
able to pay for it.

~~~
marban
Hidden RSS Urls already exist. Publishers are just lazy to implement it.

------
JadoJodo
Interesting that their FeedBurner CNAME[0] is still set.

[0] [http://feeds.reuters.com/](http://feeds.reuters.com/)

~~~
nvr219
For sure whomever is in charge of their DNS found out about this the same time
we did.

------
pmichaud
Is there an alternate source for this? It's how I got my news up until it shut
down.

~~~
reaperducer
_Is there an alternate source for this? It 's how I got my news up until it
shut down._

You could always pay for the news you consume.

~~~
gearhart
I’m a huge proponent for paid news, but that’s a bit of a strawman argument.
Reuters hasn’t made their rss paid, or removed all of their free news content.

It is sad that we’re losing a uniquely powerful mechanism for consuming news
because we can’t find a business model that supports it. People Who consumed
RSS news can’t just pay and get an equivalent experience. RSS allows filtering
and combining news sources in ways that make them much more valuable, and
can’t be reproduced just by paying for a single subscription to a publisher.

------
SamWhited
I just noticed today that City Lab as part of their move to Bloomberg also
doesn't appear to have a working Atom or RSS feed anymore :( I contacted
customer support and told them it worked on the old site but now appears to be
gone. I've had a surprising amount of success with this on news sites and
magazines in the past, so hopefully they respond positively.

~~~
SamWhited
Reuters support responded and told me I'd have to pay them if I wanted RSS
feeds back, apparently this is some sort of subscription feature now? I dunno,
it made no sense. No response from City Lab.

------
dancedar
The relelnless push to apps aka blocking ads & tracking marches on

------
jahlove
That stinks. I was subscribed for my Kodi ticker feed. I've found that Reuters
does the best job at putting actual information in the headline and not just
using it as an opportunity for clickbait.

Fictional Example:

\- CNN: Trump said what? Democrats outraged by latest tweet.

\- Reuters: Trump tweets 'looting leads to shooting' in response to BLM
Protests

------
soapdog
That is moving in the opposite direction of the recent trend...

People are getting sick of silos and algorithmic timelines. Lot's my friends
are moving back to RSS and feed aggregators, heck I'm building a RSS add-on.

------
Mr_Sweater
AP also did this, I use their app but wish I could pay to get rid of the ads.

------
captn3m0
I was sad the day the RSS feed on Jordan Mechner's site stopped working. I
think it was around the time Stripe published the PoP book.

We need more RSS feeds!

------
epaulson
I wish there was an OAuth for RSS, so I could subscribe to private/paid feeds
through reader apps I only partially trusted.

~~~
njkleiner
There actually is, kind of.

The IndieWeb[0] community has come up with a protocol called AutoAuth[1] that
solves this exact problem.

It's only a rough draft at the moment and it is built upon the IndieAuth[2]
protocol (which, in turn, is based on OAuth 2), but I think the way it works
is highly fascinating.

Here[3] is a an overview of how it works.

[0]: [https://indieweb.org/](https://indieweb.org/) [1]:
[https://indieweb.org/AutoAuth](https://indieweb.org/AutoAuth) [2]:
[https://indieauth.spec.indieweb.org/](https://indieauth.spec.indieweb.org/)
[3]:
[https://www.svenknebel.de/temp/autoauth.html](https://www.svenknebel.de/temp/autoauth.html)

------
loktarogar
why though?

~~~
justapassenger
Ask average Joe what's an RSS feed and you'll know. Supporting effectively
dead technology doesn't make financial sense for any company.

~~~
guenthert
RSS isn't dead, it's just not popular (never has been). Teletype wasn't
popular either, still it was essential to some. And while teletype clearly
requires costly specialized hardware, RSS doesn't.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
If you'd asked me a half hour ago I would definitely have said RSS' lack of
movement was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long squawk, but
then this Reuters thing happened and I can categorically assure any one who
would like to know that RSS is not dead, it's just pining for the fjords.

------
lcnmrn
I used to include their RSS feeds on radfi.com and now I have to find a
replacement for them.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
That's a pity, I use RSS to forward feeds from many news sites to my telegram.

------
rekabis
Wouldn’t it be possible to create a third-party site scraper that could
generate custom RSS feeds independently of the company?

About the only barrier would be paywalls, IMO.

~~~
MichaelApproved
They tweet all their articles, right? No need to scrape their site, if you're
only looking for headlines. This tool will generate an RSS feed from their
Twitter account [http://fetchrss.com/twitter](http://fetchrss.com/twitter)

You won't get the article content but it'll give you enough information to
find out if you're interested in the article and then read it on their site.

[https://twitter.com/Reuters](https://twitter.com/Reuters)

------
tzfld
Page Not Found

~~~
Nicksil
Yeah, that's the problem.

