Lemmy.ml has some pretty active communities on it. Might be worth it for OP to look over their most active communities and see if any interest them. If so, you have the option of blocking communities instead of the whole instance.

Lemmygrad and hexbear pretty much stick to their sociopolitical beliefs. If that’s not your bag, then no real loss in blocking those instances.

I imagine a good number of people will fall for this. Tech illiteracy is the norm.

Link for reference: https://stagetour.com/

First I’d heard of it, but yeah same concerns after reading the FAQ.

I don’t use iOS, so I can’t speak to it directly, but some quick searching tells me it supports IMAP, caldav, and carddav. If so, you could just use native apps.

Most of the privacy respecting email services require a paid plan for this, but they are inexpensive.

This doesn’t solve your Google calendar ask, but I pointedly don’t have my work calendar on my phone. I just check each calendar separately when needed, it’s not much extra work.