# Ideas for keeping up with groups and local events without Facebook? **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/ideas-for-keeping-up-with-groups-and-local-events-without-facebook/41224 **Category:** Questions **Created:** 2026-10-05T17:07:17Z **Posts:** 4 ## Post 1 by @DutchBaby — 2026-10-05T17:07:17Z Many bands, local businesses, and more, seem to primarily notify people of performances, events, and other things going on through Facebook in my area. A few have newsletters for email, but it’s few and far between. We live out in the middle of nowhere, with a local town of about 10,000 people 45 minutes away. Facebook is how we hear about fun cooking classes, town dances, bands that are coming to the town (or the nearby city), and more. Are there any ways to access Facebook privately? Or are there other ways that we can reasonably find out this information? --- ## Post 2 by @Bluetacked — 2026-10-05T23:00:21Z With great difficulty unfortunately - old fashioned word of mouth down the pub sometimes but people tend to assume you’ve already seen on Facebook and just weren’t interested. you could look into the “Nextdoor” app, it’s mostly local traders (and people looking for local traders) here but it’s worth a look --- ## Post 3 by @SwampTrainer — 2026-10-06T05:26:04Z Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid some of these things and still participate in society. I have the same issue where I have to participate in two FB groups and use Whatsapp in order to exist where I live. Meta has the market cornered on a lot of how people communicate now. FB locks a lot down, but some public pages you can see for a post or two without logging in. Beyond that, all you can really do is make an account that’s as close to a dummy account as possible. No pictures of your face, no identifying info, don’t post things with it, etc. Use an email not usually tied to your name. Isolate FB use in a browser container, and if possible never, ever use it on your phone unless it’s logging in via the browser. Keep in mind that FB will happily triangulate your IP and browser fingerprint, so either you have to do a good job isolating, or just accept that FB will still eventually ping you as you. It depends on your threat model, but IMO being interested in local events isn’t exactly a gotcha as you already live in the area, so you’d get suggested these things anyway. --- ## Post 4 by @Bluetacked — 2026-10-06T07:19:44Z My personal philosophy for my own threat model is not to try and be a ghost and to just keep a normal profile. Enough to satisfy stalkers, employers, etc that I exist and that it’s not an overly sanitised version of myself like they’d find on LinkedIn (so I drink and have quirky interests) and hopefully find that enough to stop digging. Not that I’m someone with anything nasty or overly controversial to hide, but I find it deeply uncomfortable for people to be scrutinising me (probably some trauma from childhood and years of being closeted) so that’s where most of my privacy philosophy comes from and where I like to effectively say “here, stuff about me, now leave me alone” But I’ve had a Facebook account for years anyway, they’ve had loads of juicy info. What I care about more is giving less now to a platform that got insanely greedy, and not giving so much support to them when they openly enable the far right, shrug off reported calls to violence and murder (probably because they’re aimed at people the far right hate) and are always shoving things in my face that either piss me off or tank my mental health (or both). So my approach is to exist but keep it on a separate browser profile, use it as little as possible, and always be on the lookout for alternative ways of keeping in touch with what’s going on. Not existing there or only having a zero info account for lurking is also completely valid though, I’m not arguing just sharing my take based on personal needs that may or may not align with others.