Personally I stopped using "traditional" RSS readers years ago, and have stopped using more "modern" RSS readers like Flipboard or Feedly last couple of years, since they're just a subset of what I can find on Twitter.
Most people who own a blog have a Twitter and they share all their posts on their feed anyway, so I just follow them on Twitter and use Twitter as "RSS reader".
Before you open web standards advocates throw rocks at me, I am not an open standards hater either, I have built a couple of RSS related apps as projects in the past and still believe that's the way to go in the long term, but in 2016 I can't really find a reason to still use a RSS reader.
In fact the scenarios like what OP mentioned in the article is exactly why I would rather use Twitter. Why deprive of yourself of an opportunity to read content from someone you like, when you have a totally free option?