I’ve been using Instagram as a way to stay up to date with all the local community events or small businesses doing events around me for the past couple of years.
With everything happening at Meta and TikTok, I’ve deleted and uninstalled most social media accounts and apps.
Do y’all have any suggestions for keeping up to date on local events around your neighborhoods without having to use Instagram or Facebook? Do I have to sign up for 30 email newsletters?
I’m not sure, that’s the one reason I use Instagram also. You could use something like MyInsta, which blocks ads and I think lets you disable shit like Reels. You could also try using an RSS feed with proxygram, although I’ve found the public instances to be unreliable and I’m not sure if it still works. Otherwise, you’re going to need to somehow convince them to use a certain Mastodon instance instead (offering to host one for your local area might make people more interested, but even then good luck with that).
maybe an RSS feed or pay a street urchin to check up on businesses for you every now and then
I’m out of ideas beside those
Letters and talking IRL.
You’re getting a lot of flack here but I completely agree and am facing down the same issue. The best alternative I’ve found is my local subreddit, which is fairly active around community events. There’s still a disconnect from the actual businesses, by and large, but it’s not nothing.
I’ve been using Instagram as a way to stay up to date with all the local community events or small businesses doing events around me for the past couple of years.
You have?? This is what I was using the platform for but then, many years ago, they forced an algorithm on us so I was no longer able to use it. Most of the posts I see are days old so I always miss events.
I would love if more establishments / organizations would use newsletters and public calendars. I’ve been trying to tell people, you want to own your content and your mailing list, but Meta makes it so easy for them to do things that it’s an uphill battle.
I use an RSS reader to deal with newsletters. I use BigNews but there’s also Stoop which give you an email address to subscribe to newsletters without them flooding your inbox.
Say goodbye to your normie friends and make a new set to replace them.
ive never used those services, ever. email/mailing lists have always just worked… but only for the last 25 years or so. ymmv
My Nextdoor app is full of local events. Maybe yours is too?
I’ve seen Nextdoor for parts of Los Angeles and it’s full of garbage, making it less useful. It really depends on how your neighbors are using it.
talk to people irl
How about you read about it in the local newspaper?
My local paper is NOT gonna tell my when the speakeasy style bar is hosting a jazz night.
Are you sure? Normally those bars advertise events in the local newspaper, there often is a page or two dedicated to things like that at the end of the newspaper.
Buddy they don’t even put it on their website.
Is that the right way to run a business? Heck no, but it’s what’s happening and I like seeing jazz at the speakeasy style bar in a laundromat so I gotta ask someone with an Instagram account to check for me.
Have you spoken to the business? Maybe they can offer a solution that you’re not aware of.
Maybe you can get a group text going with other patrons who will text the group about it? Maybe you can set up an RSS feed from their instagram account?
Its not perfect, but you can anonymously browse Instagram using imginn.
There is also proxygram, which is similar to imginn, but if you don’t want to set up your own instance, you can use others via the Libredirect extension.
Telegram.
If you’re lucky they have an Atom or RSS feed somewehere. (Even if it just may be one from their back-end so they can show the articles on their news page). You could then put that in an RSS reader of your choice.
If you have some scripting experience you could check out Newsboat. You can use a script as source there, and that script then scrapes the their website and generates an Atom feed from raw HTML parsing.
Phone call, SMS, RMS, WhatsApp, discord, signal, snapchat, Skype, teams, RSS, Facebook, pixelfed, ect
