If you want news and articles from the sites you appreciate to come to you directly and not be filtered through social media first, RSS is what you want. You get every link, and often the full text of every post, and you aren’t at the whim of an algorithm.

Spam-free? It’s literally only what you’ve specifically asked it to deliver you. If a site starts spamming its RSS feed, you just unsubscribe from the site.

Tracker-free? There’s literally no way anyone could track you through RSS. It’s just an XML file and can’t run any arbitrary code.

I use it for everything I can: news sites, blogs, YouTube channels, social media feeds for people whose content I don’t want to miss. There are even services that will let you subscribe to an email newsletter through one of their inboxes, and they’ll convert it to an RSS feed for you to follow so it doesn’t clog up your actual inbox. I especially like reading webcomics through it; it makes sure I get everything, and I don’t lose my place, get spoiled by a later post, or have to rely on the whims of social media.

I love RSS.