Often associated with journalism, the practice of collecting and organizing information regularly and methodically is actually a key skill for everyone. It helps us understand our environment, allows us to discover inspiration, anticipate risks, identify trends, and make informed decisions. Yet it sometimes lacks structure and method. Used to letting algorithms decide for us, we have come to accept a form of loss of control over our information, without always knowing why certain content reaches us rather than another.
This dependence on automated feeds presents risks: information bubbles, blind spots, lack of source diversity… To the point of abandoning the internet as a tool? Far from it. The web remains a valuable research resource if you know how to use it and are willing to free yourself somewhat from the major platforms. How can you do this? We offer you some practical advice and tools for monitoring that is both comprehensive and personalized, truly serving your objectives.
Use RSS feeds
RSS feeds are not a new thing. Popularized by the Netscape browser starting in 1999, they allow you to view publications from multiple websites through "aggregators" that present the content in a single feed, often in chronological order, and updated automatically. Depending on the site, it's even possible to retrieve only articles on a specific topic. For example, if you're interested in ecology, you can create an RSS feed that brings together only articles from the "Environment" sections of several news outlets. Unlike social networks, the content is presented in a customizable feed, complete, without automatic sorting and without tracking.
While they have gradually been overshadowed by the rise of social media and their algorithmic recommendations, they are nonetheless experiencing a resurgence of interest in a context where readers and media outlets want to regain control over the distribution and sharing of information on the Internet. Take 404 Media for example, which has implemented a system allowing its paying subscribers to receive the full text of an article directly in their RSS feed.
There are many feed readers, here are some examples:
- Feeder: paid service, with a free version
- NetNewsWire: open source tool but limited to Mac OS and iOS.
- Kill the Newsletter: transforms your newsletters into Atom feeds.
- Feedly: a free version that provides the essentials
Regain control on platforms
Despite their flaws, social media platforms remain valuable monitoring tools for many. With perspective and measured use, they can offer efficient access to sources, testimonies, and diverse viewpoints that remain difficult to find elsewhere.
A few tips:
- Use bookmarks to save videos you want to retrieve later. On TikTok and Instagram, you can create categories to organize your content and find it more easily afterward.
- If you use Bluesky, did you know you can create your own feeds? It takes a bit of work but the social network provides comprehensive documentation on the subject. Otherwise, you can find other feeds created by users directly in the app.
- Subscribe! Get back into the habit of actively following people whose content you enjoy and regularly checking your subscription feed, rather than relying solely on automatic suggestions that have largely taken over on most social networks.
Organize your screenshots
It's the simplest method but also the most prone to headaches: the screenshot. With a simple press of your smartphone's side buttons, you can capture what you see on screen… only to never revisit it, your image getting lost in the depths of your device. Even if you stumble upon it someday by chance, you may have completely forgotten why you decided to save it in the first place.
Take the time to organize yourself and make it an important part of your workflow. For example, schedule a sorting session at the end of the day by reviewing your captures from the day to delete the ones you don't need and file the ones you want to keep in folders. Make it a habit by adding it to your calendar, for instance (this also works for sorting the 40 tabs you've opened on your computer throughout the day). It may seem like it takes a long time, but just a few minutes a day will save you major headaches later on.
Check news aggregators
We mentioned RSS feeds earlier for aggregating information, but if you'd rather not worry about it (even though, trust us, it's simple), there are ready-made solutions available. They can be updated manually by a person, automatically via RSS feeds, or enriched by suggestions from other users.
Here are some that I use for my personal monitoring:
- Hacker News: a highly popular site in tech and science-focused communities, powered by users who vote for the best stories to push them up the list.
- Clones: diverse topics and a curated selection of frequently interesting and regularly updated links.
- Skimfeed: a very broad yet very practical selection to see at a glance articles published across a large number of sites.
Organize your links and store them
Nothing is more frustrating than losing an interesting page after accidentally closing it amid dozens of open tabs, or simply after forgetting the source or title, launching a painful search through your history to try to find the blasted link. Keep in mind that if you don't want to add yet another tool to your collection, most browsers allow you to create bookmarks sorted into folders. But if you store a lot of items, there are dedicated solutions that could be useful to you: adding tags, descriptions, a more intuitive interface, and more.
A few examples:
- Raindrop: free version that's already very full-featured, with unlimited links to save, plus it uses less AI than its paid version.
- Bookmark It: displays your links as a feed similar to a social network so you can browse them chronologically.
- Are.na : an online platform that lets you create collections and easily share them. Similar to Pinterest, but more modern.
- Obsidian: a note-taking alternative to Notion that gives you more control over your data and content management. You can use their extension to easily save links to your pages.
Be careful, however, about the sustainability of these tools! They have an unfortunate tendency to shut down. The hugely popular Pocket ceased operations in early July 2025 and Omnivore, an open source solution, disappeared last November. So make sure your tools allow you to easily export your links if you ever want to switch platforms.
Search
Come across an interesting article on a website you don't know well? Dig deeper. Find out who the author is, look at their other articles and where they're published. We tend to lose this reflex, yet it's the key to discovering many media outlets and authors. Because we rely on algorithms to serve us information and inspiration on a silver platter, we miss out on a lot of quality content that's only a few clicks away.
Broaden your horizons
Subscribe to anything. This advice may seem contradictory to the initial promise of more peaceful and efficient monitoring, yet it's in the most unexpected places that you'll find the rare gem. We tend to convince ourselves that we must read everything on a specific subject to the point where we go in circles, because everything ends up repeating itself. It can sometimes be wise to set aside a source of information (a newsletter for example) on your favorite subject and try new sources.
For example: I'm not particularly passionate about finance and investment. Yet, in a recent Bloomberg Money Stuff newsletter, I learned that ChatGPT can create speculative bubbles by amplifying niche investment advice found on Reddit. This advice is then shared by Reddit users, which the AI will read and redistribute, fueling an endless cycle. An example that illustrates well the role of these tools in the circulation of information online and the consequences of this self-feeding process. Interesting, isn't it?
With a bit of experience, you can learn to spot sources with real potential. So try them out, read what they offer, and if you don't find anything useful, unsubscribe. If you use the bookmark management systems mentioned earlier, you'll be able to quickly identify where the articles that interested you came from.
Share your watch
Now it's your turn: share your findings. Whether through a newsletter, videos on TikTok, posts on Reddit, a blog… All the recommendations and advice above only make sense if internet users like you and me contribute by sharing our ideas, discoveries and inspirations. Faced with platform excesses, the power of big tech firms, the omnipresence of AI, the desire to flee the web is more palpable than ever. But this is precisely the time to invest in it intelligently and sustainably, to prevent it from being left in the hands of a handful of players, so we can make the web a space of free inspiration and collective knowledge.
