@jesse_b insofar as SE's goal is to collect information and make it available to the public, I'm not sure Codidact is a competitor, but just another party working towards the same goal. And I had the impression that that's at least what SE says their goal is...

@ilkkachu They are a for profit business

That's like a grocery store saying their goal is simply to provide food to the public. It's true but they also want to make money while doing it

though the comparison to grocery stores fails since they don't usually provide platforms for generic communication, like chats here are

Talking about it in chat is very different than using the site itself to advertise a competitor

Ok, I'm not exactly sure what sort of a feed Andreas meant, I thought it was about something that would appear in chat.

@ilkkachu Yes the "new feed items" in chat is a feature of this site.

It's a tool they use to advertise their own questions

@ilkkachu It is. Either a ticker feed that temporarily appears in the upper right corner in the chat room to users present in the room, or the standard as-a-message feed.

But it's just a suggestion. I'm not a regular in these rooms, so if people here don't want it, I won't nag about it.

~upper left corner, not right, but anyway.

I'm just thinking from the perspective of SE as a company, not as a user of the room. I'm quite certain if they discover their site is advertising a competing site for free they would put a stop to that, and they might even take punitive actions towards whoever allowed it.

Nope, won't do that; trust me, we had a strike last year.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact I know it was incredibly effective. I saw dozens of people change their names to something indicating "I'm leaving the site" and then remain on the site

It was during that strike I decided to leave. I decided to stay in chat, and occasionally leave a comment or two on MSO or MSE.

My point was just that SE didn't go after any individuals in the community, so far as I can see.

easy solution would be to just ask them if it's okay before doing it

Well, it may sound wrong coming from the person suggesting a feed in the first place, but it isn't up to SE to decide. It's a choice of the community.

I can assure you it absolutely is their right/ability to revoke that choice

Well, then. :)

If you ask SE I can’t see them saying anything other than “no” (if they respond), and the only possible change as a result of that would be to get the feed banned on Codegolf. It seems to me that the relevant people here are the mods since they’re the ones with the most skin in the game (such as it is).

As it's sparked some controversy amongst regulars of the room already, might be best to just not go through with it, then.

@AndreasmovedtoCodidact just with jesse_b — I for one wouldn’t mind.

@StephenKitt A similar concern was raised in the AskUbuntu room too, so he's not the only one in the bigger group. But happy to hear you're fine with it, at least.

Again it's not that I have a problem with it but if I were stack exchange I definitely would. If you think they would have no issue with it than it should be no problem at all to ask. If you think they would say no that is a good indicator that it probably shouldn't be done.

There’s a big difference between “saying no” and having no issue with it. In many cases, if you ask before doing something, the simple answer is “no”, and that’s what you’ll get. If you do it and then it needs to be evaluated, the person doing the evaluation will often actually spend time on it instead of just saying “no” (even when then can just say “no”), and you might get a different answer.

I think I'd have to refer to the official policy on chat room feeds, over at /dev/null. As far as I'm concerned, more information (external Q&A) would be on-topic "enough" here.

That complies with the FAQ's "This site is an extension of The Stack Exchange Network, so discussion should more or less revolve around the same topics you'd find at The Stack Exchange Network — but in an interactive, less strictly Q&A focused way. Do have fun, but please keep it professional and always be respectful of your fellow community members."

It's also easily reversible, which is a nice feature.

The Feed section of the chat page says it's for "RSS or ATOM feeds can be used to automatically bring up-to-date content into the room from an external source."