I use RSS for several reasons. 1.) I can collect everything in one central point. For example, in Thunderbird I can collect all RSS links and put them in one folder. If I then take the time once a day to read these links I can update them all at the same time. This is more a technical aspect. 2.) RSS is free. Free from advertising. Free from stuff I don't want to see on a website or in an article. I have only the pure article, which I can then read. 3.) I can turn off the display of HTML and then have only the content of a web page. Especially for blog articles where images are not so important, I find this better.
I do for podcasts. There are a couple of reasons, but the main one is I don't want a "platform" taking over. Partly that's because I don't see the value they add, partly because of reliability issues (you tube deleting channels by mistake) and partly free speech.
For websites that update irregularly. I don't read in the feeder though, I am fine with visiting the website itself.<p>If the websites have a lot of output, I dont add to RSS but rather visit manually.<p>Question: Why do you say "<i>still</i> use"? :)
I use RSS all the time, I read almost all my news through the reader, either by clicking the link or reading the content inside my reader (liferea).<p>I have a general rule that I don't read news from websites that don't have an RSS feed. I really can't be arsed to check those websites individually and navigate through their idiosyncratic UI to see if there is anything that interests me.<p>The reader allows me to get all my news in a uniform manner and, not unimportant, chronological order.
To read:
HN and Techmeme, NCBI (medical research publications) alerts, Company blogs, University press releases, Local and world newspapers, Blogs by the R community, Amazon price alerts from camelcamelcamel.com, Read mailchimp newsletters when they offer a feed, Follow specific keywords/users on reddit, pinboard, Flickr, and Glassdoor
Following blogs was the initial reason, but now I use it also to 1. follow top HN threads (hnbest) 2. follow GitHub releases (native support) 3. follow Twitter users (via Nitter) 4. follow YouTube users (native support) 5. follow new Reddit posts (native support)