The Rise and Fall of Facebook Events

Facebook Events once served as a cornerstone for community organizing. In its early days, the platform was free, widely accessible, and functioned effectively as a way for organizers to reach their audiences directly within their social feeds.

However, the platform’s usefulness has significantly declined. Facebook’s shift toward video content prioritization, API closures affecting community groups, and increasingly exploitative business practices have made it substantially harder for small community organizations to get their events in front of people without paying for advertising. This has triggered a widespread exodus from the platform.

The podcast discusses how these changes impact community organizing work. Rachel Evaroa, who manages the Old Abbey Taphouse in Hulme, describes how event promotion has become progressively more difficult. Ticket-selling platforms now extract substantial fees, and Facebook’s algorithm changes require constant adaptation from organizers.

David Hayward, founder of Feral Vector festival, notes that “platforms can generate shareholder value by making life harder for their users.” This dynamic reflects a fundamental problem: these corporations aren’t designed to serve communities—they’re designed to extract data and sell advertising.

The PlaceCal Solution

PlaceCal is a platform developed to aggregate local events and connect community groups. Rather than relying on a single corporate platform, PlaceCal pulls information from tools people already use (Google Calendar, Outlook) and creates a unified, community-focused directory.

The approach emphasizes reciprocity, training, and genuine human connection—elements that commercial platforms systematically remove to maximize profit extraction.