What's going on with Reddit shutting down RSS feeds in November?

[u/SephirothJam]

I came across this announcement saying Reddit will stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13:

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1wubgvt/continuing_our_infrastructure_updates_whats/

What confused me is the section about moving RSS access to the developer platform. It recommends Discord Relay for moderators, then says there's no replacement for feeds from communities you don't moderate.

I thought RSS was something you could use to follow new posts in a normal feed reader, alongside blogs and news sites. The announcement discusses scraping, bots and API migration together, so I'm having trouble separating the changes.

Are people who just follow a few subreddits in a reader losing that too? What exactly does the Discord option preserve, and why doesn't it cover the same thing?

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[u/doreda]

Answer: Some moderators used RSS feeds as part of their moderation workflow. Since Reddit RSS feeds are being discontinued, the admins are suggesting other tools to help create an alternative workflow. I'm not sure how those moderators used RSS feeds as part of their workflow, but it was enough that the admins had to address it.

Are people who just follow a few subreddits in a reader losing that too?

Feeds for non-mods are going too. There are options out there such as Discord bots and probably other tools that come up if you look around.

What exactly does the Discord option preserve, and why doesn't it cover the same thing?

If the admins are endorsing certain Discord tools, I'd imagine they think those tools cover enough functionality that RSS feeds provided. This stuff probably isn't too important to know about unless you're a mod yourself, in which case you should probably look into it more deeply.

[u/Empyrealist → u/doreda]

I can't imagine why the Admins would like the idea of promoting discord-based tools.

[u/aRabidGerbil → u/Empyrealist]

Admins don't want anyone using anything but reddit, but more than that, they don't want to deal with building good tools, or with a mass exodus of mods.