Ask HN: Do people still use Meetup?
Sure, people over 60 still use it.  I&#x27;m sure that it&#x27;s different in other regions, but Meetup is effectively dead in the LA area.  Even before COVID, I noticed a steep decline in usage.  I think Meetup simply didn&#x27;t do enough to improve the experience.  There&#x27;s a few reasons I can identify, but that&#x27;s kind of off topic.<p>IMO, you&#x27;re not far off from what may be the way forward for event planning&#x2F;broadcasting.  A lot of people are actually using Eventbrite as an alternative to Meetup because it&#x27;s free and removes the membership hurdle, and it also has fewer rules than Meetup.  At a bare minimum, Eventbrite + an email list would be viable.<p>As far as messaging&#x2F;community, yeah, there&#x27;s Discord, but Discord likes to do sweeping bans on servers they don&#x27;t agree with.  Your &quot;Bay Area Russians&quot; Discord server could disappear overnight and your entire community is gone.  And yes, I have experience with that happening.  Signal would be preferable, maybe Telegram, since they&#x27;re less scary to normies than something like Matrix.