One of the challenges for RSS is that even a lot of hobbyist blogs that aren’t big "corporate social media" depend on ad income. The blog owner might keep an RSS feel going either out of ignorance (because his Wordpress setup automatically generates it, but he doesn't think about it) or because he thinks it important for SEO, but he really doesn't want people using it. He needs people to visit his site whenever they want to see the latest posts, so that then they can be exposed to ads. I have seen blogs where even mentioning in the comments section that you subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, is an automatic ban.

So if we want feeds to become popular again, we need to encourage support models for indie content that don’t depend on ads. So far, blog owners are seeing a dearth of donations and sponsorships to keep them motivated, so of course signing up for an ad network is the only choice they think they have.