May 5, 2026
RSS in pieces
YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken
Fans say YouTube is hiding and breaking the one feed that lets them escape the algorithm
TLDR: YouTube’s channel feeds, a simple way to follow creators without using the homepage, are reportedly breaking or disappearing, and users are furious. Commenters say the bigger insult is that unwanted Shorts keep flooding in, turning a clean subscription tool into another chaotic scroll trap.
YouTube users are having a full-on main character meltdown over one very specific complaint: the site’s old-school channel feeds keep breaking, and the people who rely on them feel like they’re being quietly shoved back into the app’s endless recommendation swamp. For readers who don’t live online like this, these feeds are basically a simple list of new uploads from creators you choose yourself. No surprise recommendations, no algorithm, no chaos. And that’s exactly why commenters think YouTube doesn’t seem eager to help.
The mood in the replies is a mix of rage, resignation, and gallows humor. One user says the feed page now spits out a dramatic “too many requests” warning, which sounds less like a bug and more like a bouncer at the club saying, “Not you.” Another says they’ve had to train their feed reader with rules like “please don’t tell me about shorts” and “I don’t care if this person is live right now,” which is both funny and deeply bleak. The hottest consensus? Shorts are the villain of this story. More than one commenter says YouTube feeds are now cluttered with bite-size vertical videos they never asked for, with one bluntly declaring that “Shorts ruined the YouTube feeds.”
And then there’s the simmering conspiracy vibe: is this neglect, or is it a quiet strategy to push everyone back toward the ad-filled homepage? The community seems to have made up its mind, and it’s not exactly giving YouTube the benefit of the doubt.
Key Points
- •The article says YouTube channel RSS feeds are unreliable, with reports of feeds going silent or disappearing without warning.
- •It states that YouTube does not visibly provide RSS feed links on channel pages, requiring users to construct feed URLs manually from channel identifiers.
- •The article says YouTube Shorts are being included in channel feeds, which some users of feed readers do not want.
- •It frames YouTube’s feed handling as part of a wider trend among large platforms to reduce the visibility and usability of feeds.
- •The article notes that YouTube still offers feeds, even as it argues the platform has made them harder to use.