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?
I usually read my RSS feeds on my phone. That’s fine - I could do this by just subscribing to the sources directly. But every once in a while I want to look up something I read some years ago and I don’t quite remember what the article was called and where it was published. Filtering and searching on my desktop is much more convenient and I have my history saved there - even if the blog in question is offline in the meantime. In addition some RSS feeds only send a short text and a “read more” link. With FreshRSS I can configure a feed to automatically load the complete article from the website and in my reader it shows up as if the feed was a real full feed with pictures and everything. I can even compress the pictures to optimize loading as my main reader is my phone.