December 5, 2025
Swipe fights Scroll
Making RSS More Fun
A swipey, no‑ads web shuffler has purists fuming while hackers flex
TLDR: A developer released a Firefox extension that shuffles random small websites and boosts popular picks with simple likes. Comments split between RSS purists saying it’s being used wrong, skeptics calling it freeloading, and tinkerers pitching AI upgrades—highlighting a real hunger for easy small‑web discovery without big‑tech algorithms.
A bored dev just launched a Firefox toy that turns the “small web” into a swipey feed: hit a button, get a random site, upvote if you vibe, downvote if you don’t. No ads, no creepy tracking—just vibes, nostalgia, and a leaderboard. It’s basically StumbleUpon energy with TikTok-style simplicity and a retro 90s Apple look. Want in? Try TimeWaster Pro.
Then the comments exploded. One skeptic snarked, “In other words consume things for free…,” stirring the age-old creator-pay debate. RSS purists rolled in like gatekeepers: you’re “using RSS wrong,” they say—just skim headlines, don’t treat feeds like must-read homework. Meanwhile, the “make it smarter” crowd flexed hard: one commenter says his reader learns after “a few thousand” thumbs, another wired in local AI and push alerts to auto-notify when interesting stuff drops. The vibe? Swipe vs Scroll, purity vs convenience.
There’s StumbleUpon nostalgia, Google-search fatigue, and a surprising number of folks admitting RSS feels like chores. Some cheer the lightweight, community-upvote idea as the antidote to bloated algorithms. Others want more tech, more smarts, more robot helpers. The drama’s delicious: purists clutch feeds, tinkerers ship code, casuals just want 15 minutes of fun before the next meeting—and everyone’s petty about it.
Key Points
- •A Firefox extension is available to surface random content from small websites using RSS.
- •Users can upvote, downvote, and report content; accounts are required to participate.
- •The backend slowly crawls RSS feeds, stores pages, and ranks items so upvoted content appears more often.
- •The project uses FastAPI and SQLAlchemy, with admin reporting and a leaderboard endpoint.
- •The UI is styled with system.css to mimic classic Apple System OS aesthetics, emphasizing a non-commercial, playful project.