I see a lot of options for self-hosting RSS subscriptions and I don’t actually understand what they are for. The very nature of RSS is that it tracks and connects to online content. It seems like having a home server track and download the content just so that you can download it on another device from your server instead of the original servers a bit redundant. Also, it seems like the clients are more limited, since it has ro connect to your personal host, as opposed to the many RSS readers available.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I genuinely don’t get it. What am I missing?
IMO, I think my answer here is really the same for all of my self-hosted apps: I want to control the flow of the data myself and not be upset when an app we use every day is retired or changed or just enshittifies over time. And this way, I know nobody is in between me and the news publisher. They can see what I read but nobody else is watching over that process in the middle.
I was a loyal Inoreader fan for many years before switching to FreshRSS on my server and I won’t go back. That’s a great service but self hosting any app is just better.