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 am in a similar position, yes. I’ve resisted for so many years, but Instagram right now is the only place where some of the local organizations I’m interested in post. Clubs, town events, even leftist social centers who are usually sensible to online privacy and megacorp dependence sometimes only have an instagram or facebook page.
Right now I have a text note with the urls to the websites of the instagram pages that don’t have a newsletter/RSS feed. And another note with the link to their instagram pages, that I sometimes check out. Luckily you still don’t necessarily need to login to access an account’s recent posts from the browser, so as long as you periodically clear your cookies, a browser will do.
I also have been trying to convince some of these pages to create an account on Mastodon or use Gancio, if available. Even a Telegram channel would suffice. Some of them (two) did, but stopped to update it after a few months because most reach comes from facebook/instagram and they won’t bother to post stuff on another platform