Yes. The group I used to run also addressed a lot of these challenges. However, this isn’t so easy for everyone who runs meetups.
Part of the promise of WeWork buying Meetup, for instance, was “oh look! We have access to tons of real estate to house Meetups in.” A large amount of organizer support was providing ideas for places to have events.
I worked at Meetup for a couple of years. There were often Meetup groups that started up in the guise of $GENERIC get together, that ended up actually being literal lead gen for a pyramid scheme. This wasn’t likely a tech meetup thing, but perhaps a knitting circle, or whatever.
> started up in the guise of $GENERIC get together, that ended up actually being literal lead gen for a pyramid scheme
Ah yes yes. That's horrifying.