I’ve got access to the beta of the Surf app. Some thoughts:

some stuff I really liked:

  • rss works (though no custom URLs yet, just what they already scraped)

  • you get lemmy, mastodon, bluesky, threads all together

  • you can make your own feeds and check what other people made (like a custom timeline, or topic-specific like “NBA”, “woodworking”, “retro gaming stuff”)

  • has different modes: you can switch between videos, articles, podcasts depending on the feed

but also…

  • can’t add your own RSS feeds (huge miss)

  • some feeds break and show no posts even when they’re active (ok, it’s still a beta)

  • YouTube videos have ads (not into that—I support creators through patreon, affiliate links, whatever. not ads)

  • feeds you create are public by default unless you manually change it

  • not open source. built on open protocols, sure. but the app is locked up. (HUGE MISS)

all that said, I really believe: better feeds = better experience = better shot at the fediverse going mainstream.

anyone else tried it?

do you know anyone building an open source version of this? is that even realistic?

I’d love to hear what do you think :)

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    I got in several months ago but they require a fucking Google account to activate it. I don’t understand how they can pretend to make an entire app “built for the open web” that has big tech dependencies. It’s a fuckin’ joke, as far as I’m concerned.

    • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      If your goal is to get the masses to try something new, making it as easy as possible to onboard them makes absolute sense. That includes letting them sign up using something that 98.123456789% of the people use.

      And if you already are out of Big Tech hell hole, then you likely already know how to find and manage and curate your own feeds.

      • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        making it as easy as possible to onboard them makes absolute sense

        I don’t understand how one could possibly think that requiring a Google account would make it easier to onboard new users…

        And if you already are out of Big Tech hell hole, then you likely already know how to find and manage and curate your own feeds.

        The software necessary to do what Surf does, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t exist elsewhere.

        • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          I don’t understand how one could possibly think that requiring a Google account would make it easier to onboard new users…

          Simple. “Log in with Google” is a lot less friction than getting people to sign up to a new service. Even more so for a mobile-focused application like Surf/Flipboard.

          doesn’t exist elsewhere.

          Isn’t it “just” a feed reader with a pre-curated list of feeds? Doing that is not complicated. The hard part is doing it in a way that it is easy for non-techies.

          • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            1 hour ago

            You should probably educate yourself about this app before you start arguing about it.

            “Log in with Google” is a lot less friction than getting people to sign up to a new service.

            There is no new service. You log in with your existing BlueSky, Mastodon, YouTube account(s). The Google account is only needed to download the app.

            Isn’t it “just” a feed reader with a pre-curated list of feeds?

            No.