&gt; I have never used an RSS feed and never felt the lack (though I have only a vague idea what it is).<p>RSS is just another form of a customized news feed.  You decide what blogs or blog categories you enjoy, and in one location, you see all the new posts about things you&#x27;ve followed.  This allows you to customize your view of information in a different way than HN, Reddit, subreddits, Facebook, etc. and you don&#x27;t need to give out your email address, receive e-mailed newsletters, or set up any accounts that have auto-subscribed mailing lists.<p>&gt; What&#x27;s facebook got to do with anything?<p>In some countries, such as Cambodia, Facebook is an important source of news reports.  So far, media there remains uncensored, and Facebook is the easiest way for news to get legs, even moreso than the US I would say.  Cambodia uses Facebook like the US uses Reddit and HN.  There&#x27;s some semblance of voting and comment threads, so it provides more features on top of the reputable newspaper websites.<p>However, Facebook is not really the best way to get discussion going.  Threads are difficult to navigate and the loading is slow.  I tried to show a few people Reddit while I was there, but for many reasons, that is a hard sell.<p>Anyway, I think some Americans use Facebook in the same way.  They get a lot of their news from friends there and don&#x27;t feel the need to seek out much else.  It&#x27;s too bad because yeah, you&#x27;ll probably find more relevant information for you if you seek it out yourself, but at the same time I get why people use Facebook.  You have your group of trusted friends and presumably there&#x27;s some overlap in your interests.  It&#x27;s easy to look at news they&#x27;ve already vetted.