Shit's gotten weird out there. The internet has devolved from something that was mostly quirky and altruistic to something that, in many ways, is straight-up evil. Companies have commoditized user attention through an economic framework that is completely divorced from the user's experience: Advertisers go to some ad platform, set up a few tags, and third parties shill for them without knowing anything about advertiser or user. The user's experience is determined by some algorithm whose sole purpose is to increase engagement, so the effects on the user are harmful and unknown, and advertisers don't care.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.doliver.org//articles/rss-as-a-skill