selfh.st: improper etiquette by 2010 standards? (trackers, no RSS) Thoughts?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I went to selfh.st because someone posted a link to a github repo that had some tracking appended to the URL (?ref=selfh.st). OK your marketing worked on me I’m a mark.

I still have an aversion to this kind of tracking. Maybe considering how old-fashioned it it compared to the undetectable and nearly impossible to evade tracking methods currently deployed, that’s wrong. Maybe this is just charming and quaint.

Disregarding the above, I liked the site enough to subscribe to their RSS feed selfh.st/rss/. Well that was pointless, as there is no content in the feed. Each entry like this:

Self-hosted news, updates, launches, and content for the week ending Friday, August 1, 2025

Continue reading on selfh.st…

I kind of expect a meaningful RSS feed these days. It sign of participating in the Libre internet.

Workaround: I have used Kill the Newsletter! (which kicks ass) to convert the email newsletter to an Atom feed which appears to work. Got the confirmation email, now need to wait for a post to be made.

What do you all think?

Link tracking: yay or nay?
Placeholder RSS: Rude or acceptable?

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Comments

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paradox2011@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Hmm, I’m subscribed to their RSS feed and I get full articles out of each post 🤷

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- Bjornir@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Have you checked recently ? I did get the full articles until 2 or 3 months ago and now it’s the garbage described above. I am also using feeder.
  
  They even replaced older posts that were complete with the garbage, but if I go far back enough I still have the complete version of older posts.
  
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  - paradox2011@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Try going to the settings for the specific feed and toggle on “fetch full articles by default.” I tried turning that off on mine and I got the same thing that your describing. Turned it back on and back to business as usual. Image
    
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gitamar@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I find general source tracking perfectly acceptable. It does not identify me as a user to any of both parties only tells the target site that users originate from another site.

I find personalized urls or tracking parameters bad. General source channel tracking is harmless for me.

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SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
im subbed with freshrss and for the first few weeks, it was a full article each Friday.

now, it’s just like you’ve posted.

i may have been late to that site but i do feel like i saw the seeds of enshittification sprout right before my eyes

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MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Referral tracking with the URL is fine IMO, it’s useful for someone running a site to see what other sites they are getting traffic from, and it doesn’t really affect my privacy.

I have noticed the RSS feed thing, I assume they want to get site traffic and are preventing people from reading with a feed reader or something?

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illusionist@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Doesn’t ublock strip away the referrer?

To me, that’s generic and not invasive.

Selfh.st “just” started. Maybe he didn’t get around setting it up. Did you ask?

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- otter@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The developer and the project have profiles in Mastodon, it should be possible to tag them in this thread directly
  
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- laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  yahoo.co.uk/?illus
  
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AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I just pulled the feed for the first time after reading your post, and the content is like you describe. A pity as I liked what I saw on the website.

I may try the workaround and see if it helps.

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I remember he mentions the ?ref in a blog post a while ago but I can’t remember what it was there for.

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papertowels@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is such a Lemmy/self hosted problem lol

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- laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yup the only place to post it. :D
  
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ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The ?ref doesn’t bother me at all. Most of the target sites don’t even recognize it and if they do, I’m not sure what they’d do with it. Most of the links are to Github anyway and what is that going to mean to them?

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rastacalavera@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The RSS is a disappointment. I’ve been following that site since day one. I use NetNewsWire for my app. There is a web view toggle that shows maybe 70% of the content correctly. The updates and new software don’t render correctly.

It use to work fine, I want to say this is something to do with the ghost platform. It drives you to the web site. I’d be more inclined to just go to the website every Friday rather than have a broken rss.

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mouse@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The ?ref tag is from the Ghost blogging platform. forum.ghost.org/t/…/2

This is called “Outbound link tagging” - you can configure this on the Analytics Settings page (/ghost/#/settings/analytics)

And yeah, they do the same as GamingOnLinux with not including the content.

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- laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m sure a lot (the majority) of people who are interested in selfhosting block ads. Need a different business model.
  
  On the other hand a lot of people interested in selfhosting appear to have cash to throw around on their hobby. Might be better to
  
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nesc@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
nay

rude

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RobotZap10000@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My RSS reader, Akregator, has an option to open every article in an embedded web browser. I use this feature precisely for these kinds of situations. Most artists that I follow have their own websites with proper RSS feeds, but others only post on Bluesky or similar, that also only show the title and body text. If I can’t follow them through RSS, I just don’t follow them at all. I can’t be bothered to have their newsletter clog up my inbox or use some third-party service that will probably shut down when I least expect it to.

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saddlebag@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The email tracking is even worse. I really hate the obfuscated links with who knows what embedded tracking. At least the ?ref is clear. It’s brought me close to unsubscribing

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- laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Email list tracking is much worse.
  
  It gets me riled up because every email list does it. Even when I know that the people who run it have no interest in it. Non-profit, non-creepy organizations have it turned on by default. They may not even be aware of it.
  
  It turns me off the whole concept of email lists because I have to be on guard to not click any of their links by mistake.
  
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darkan15@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There is an update on the RSS situation of selfh.st; TL, DR: seems to be related to ways to monetize, so now it’s available to paid subscription, but for free have to visit site to read.

https://selfh.st/post/2025-08-08-introducing-member-perks/

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