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?
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.
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.
talk to people irl
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.
Does this proxygram still work? It seems like it hasn’t been patched for a while, and Instagram’s notorious for blocking these.
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).
