News feed doesn't show custom RSS feed content after upgrade in the "For You" section

[LaurenWags]

Description

When only following a custom RSS feed in 1.61.x, after upgrade my Brave News feed appears empty (but I am still following my custom RSS selection).

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clean profile 1.61.x, close and relaunch to pull griffin
2. Enable Brave News
3. Unfollow "Top Sources"
4. Follow a custom RSS feed (I used https://kpwags.com/rss/feed.xml)
5. Confirm Brave News shows content from this RSS feed
6. Close and "upgrade" to 1.62.x
7. Open NTP (you will encounter #35213)
8. Scroll down to Brave News
9. "For You" (default view) is empty which is odd bc 1.61.x showed content
10. Change to another view (ex. "Following") --> now content is visible

Actual result:

No content on default view of Brave News:

Expected result:

Content from custom feed that I am following should be shown:

1.61.x	1.62.x (non default view)

Reproduces how often:

easily

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave | 1.62.135 Chromium: 120.0.6099.199 (Official Build) beta (x86_64)
-- | --
Revision | c66fd7306403245e6c370da9f287f69a5cf46a10
OS | macOS Version 13.6.3 (Build 22G436)

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? n/a
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel?

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields?
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards?
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome?

Miscellaneous Information:

cc @brave/qa-team @fallaciousreasoning @LorenzoMinto

[MadhaviSeelam]

Reproduced in Win 11 x64 as well.

[kjozwiak]

The above requires 1.62.147 or higher for 1.62.x verification 👍

[LaurenWags]

Verified with

Brave | 1.62.147 Chromium: 120.0.6099.234 (Official Build) (x86_64)
-- | --
Revision | 3b25c3743150a54485dea24f0ceb1e69d6db51bc
OS | macOS Version 13.6.3 (Build 22G436)

1. Installed 1.61.120
2. Enabled Brave News
3. Unfollowed Top Sources
4. Followed a custom RSS feed (https://kpwags.com/rss/feed.xml & https://theisleofthanetnews.com)
5. Verified Brave News shows content from both the RSS feeds
6. Close and upgrade to 1.62.147
7. Enable v2 in brave://flags and relaunch
8. Opened NTP and Scrolled down to Brave News
9. clicked settings/tune button

• Confirmed "For You" (default view) shows feed from both the RSS feeds
• Confirmed Publishers listed both sources Keith Wagner & TheisleofThanetnews.com
• Confirmed both sources Keith Wagner & The Isle of Thanet News shown in the Brave news dialog sidebar

step 1	step 4	step 5	step 6	step 6	step 7	step 8	step 9