this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Selfhosted

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I went to https://selfh.st/ because someone posted a link to a github repo that had some tracking appended to the URL (?ref=selfh.st). OK your marketing worked on me I'm a mark.

I still have an aversion to this kind of tracking. Maybe considering how old-fashioned it it compared to the undetectable and nearly impossible to evade tracking methods currently deployed, that's wrong. Maybe this is just charming and quaint.

Disregarding the above, I liked the site enough to subscribe to their RSS feed https://selfh.st/rss/. Well that was pointless, as there is no content in the feed. Each entry like this:

Self-hosted news, updates, launches, and content for the week ending Friday, August 1, 2025

Continue reading on selfh.st...

I kind of expect a meaningful RSS feed these days. It sign of participating in the Libre internet.

Workaround: I have used Kill the Newsletter! (which kicks ass) to convert the email newsletter to an Atom feed which appears to work. Got the confirmation email, now need to wait for a post to be made.

What do you all think?

  1. Link tracking: yay or nay?

  2. Placeholder RSS: Rude or acceptable?

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[–] saddlebag@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The email tracking is even worse. I really hate the obfuscated links with who knows what embedded tracking. At least the ?ref is clear. It’s brought me close to unsubscribing

[–] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago

Email list tracking is much worse.

It gets me riled up because every email list does it. Even when I know that the people who run it have no interest in it. Non-profit, non-creepy organizations have it turned on by default. They may not even be aware of it.

It turns me off the whole concept of email lists because I have to be on guard to not click any of their links by mistake.