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).
be mindful of what info you want out of instagram before opening it. open it, get what you were looking for and get out. dont let it suck you in. turn off notifications. maybe install it in the work profile (if you use android) and leave the profile disabled when youre not using it.
i try to only open it once a week, like i do with my personal email. otherwise i get sucked into it when i procrastinate. but i admit i mostly rely on some friends finding out about local events.
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.
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.
Letters and talking IRL.
Let me just call every small business around me once a week and ask what events they have going on! Thank you so much! You’re so smart!
talk to people irl
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.
Telegram.
