RSS still works. But it doesn't offer writing comments like twitter/mastodon. Depending on the use-case this might be desired though.

Yes, the average user has either never used a website, or migrated to social media.

"The average user has never used a website"? Really? The average user has never once, ever, opened their browser and gone to a website? Never read a newspaper online? Gone to LinkedIn or Facebook, done banking, made a doctor's appointment, found an AC repair shop on the web rather than through an app? Because I don't know what your definition of "average user" is, but I know a bunch of non-technical folks in ages ranging from thirty-something to eighty-something who do that all the time.

(Also, they sign up for mailing lists all the time, often whether they want to or not because everybody wants you to be on their damn mailing list. Email is absolutely still a viable broadcast medium, despite all the pundits declaring "email is dead" before they go back to, you know, checking their email.)

The average user has never once, ever, opened their browser and gone to a website? Never read a newspaper online? Gone to LinkedIn or Facebook, done banking, made a doctor's appointment, found an AC repair shop on the web rather than through an app?

Yes exactly. The difference is that you live in the us where you grew up with the concept of an information superhighway in the 90s. In most of the world the internet as websites never existed, it arrived with smartphones and thus social media apps and by extension some other apps. The things you mention were all done in person or via messaging apps until other apps were introduced. Actually most of the world still does those things in person or via WhatsApp. Well of course not Facebook, LinkedIn or online banking because they arrived with smartphones too.

> a website is even more viable now, it's better for AI scraping

That's not necessarily the endorsement you think it is.

It's 100% the endorsement I think it is, someone searching for "is there a fire near me" wants an answer. The main issue with websites (and why Twitter grew) is it became easier to colocate information and get real(ish) time updates. For sites that don't care about actual traffic being able to surface that data to AI bots is perfect. If it reinforces a loop of "oh [site] is the actual source of information" even better.

Why not? I'd much prefer if I can just send my agent to gather info among these sites than have to sign up for some Twitter clone, enable Javascript, then click around through a sea of algorithm bait.

I'm still honestly surprised that government entities didn't already solve this problem for themselves. We have means to mail, call, and even email our representatives, but technology seemingly stalled out 20 years ago and didn't keep up with the idea of having a digital forum. There are even multiple channels of verification to integrate, so such governmental forums could verify who is a constituent.

But that's not the end results. Senators have youtube channels, representative posts tweets and even tiktoks to update people, and emergency broadcasts post on Facebook. I'm not opposed to the expanded reach, but when that's their only official channel, it feels like something failed.

Recent years have only now made some non-US entities be pushed to start building away from this dependency, but it's a shame it had to get this far ingrained to begin with.