YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

YouTube’s little-known Atom (often called “RSS”) feeds for channels are increasingly unreliable, with frequent 404/500 errors and inconsistent inclusion of livestreams and Shorts, frustrating users who rely on them to follow creators outside YouTube’s recommendation-driven interface. Many commenters describe elaborate workarounds—custom scripts, alternative feed URLs, dedicated readers, and filters to strip out Shorts or lives—highlighting both demand for feed-based consumption and Google’s apparent neglect or hostility toward it. Some worry that drawing attention to these problems could prompt YouTube to remove feeds entirely, as other platforms have done, further locking users into opaque algorithms and ad-centric apps.

OpenRSS site and caching issues

  • Many visitors can’t read the article due to rate limiting, 429s, 502s, and “technical difficulties” messages.
  • Some suspect network- or ISP-level blocking (including CGNAT and corporate proxies), others say a refresh eventually works.
  • A 304 + empty body response suggests caching misconfiguration on OpenRSS’s side.

YouTube feed reliability and access

  • Multiple readers see YouTube channel feeds returning 404/500 regularly; some only discover this after months of missed digests.
  • Several report feeds “going down” for a few hours at about the same time each day, corroborated by a Reddit thread.
  • Some tools (MiniFlux, NewsBlur) still auto-discover feeds from channel URLs and offer multiple formats.
  • The <link> to the feed exists in channel HTML but may require a hard refresh because the SPA navigation hides it.

Shorts in feeds: strong disagreement

  • Many heavy RSS users dislike Shorts in feeds:
    • Consider them low-value, mentally harmful, or duplicate clips of longer videos.
    • UI problems (poor casting behavior, Shorts player, vertical video on large monitors).
    • Want feeds for “proper” long-form uploads only.
  • Others defend Shorts:
    • On followed channels, Shorts are seen as normal, often high-quality content.
    • Claim that user engagement is very high and that objecting to Shorts in a “videos feed” is unreasonable.

Shorts and livestream filtering techniques

  • URL-based filtering: ignore items whose URL contains /shorts/.
  • Duration-based rules: drop items <1 minute or “no duration” (livestreams).
  • One workaround: convert channel feed to a special playlist-based feed by replacing channel_id=UC… with playlist_id=UULF… to mostly get long-form videos; a similar UUSH prefix is mentioned for Shorts-only but noted as unverified.
  • Some rely on scripts that probe youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID to detect Shorts.
  • Others build or use specialized readers (e.g., Serial, Aggly) that split or filter Shorts vs. videos.

RSS vs Atom terminology

  • Several point out that YouTube actually serves Atom, not RSS, though it is often mislabeled as RSS.
  • Some argue “feed” is the best neutral term; others say “RSS” has effectively become generic and pedantic distinctions are pointless.

Broader platform complaints and ideas

  • Frustration with YouTube’s algorithmic feeds, intrusive homepage, unreliable notifications, dropped subscriptions, ads, buffering, and lack of API access to Watch History / Watch Later.
  • Some fear public attention could motivate Google to remove feeds entirely, given their conflict with engagement-driven design.
  • Various users describe elaborate setups (MiniFlux, cron jobs, yt-dlp, RSS→email) to reclaim control, and propose features like text summaries or even micropayment-enabled feeds.