Main points
- Social network X is closing the Communities feature due to low popularity, spam, and financial scams.
- Instead of Communities, X is developing group chats and personalized feeds, planning to complete the shutdown by May 6, 2026.
X opts out of Communities / Depositphotos
Social network X is finally shutting down its Communities feature, which has been around since the days of Twitter. The reason was low user engagement, a large amount of spam, financial scams, and the spread of malware. Instead, the company is focusing on group chats and new personalized feeds.
The Communities feature was introduced back in 2021, when the platform was still called Twitter. Communities were conceived as a space for people to communicate based on interests – a kind of thematic groups where users could discuss specific topics without the unnecessary noise of the general feed. Now the company will close it due to low popularity, TechCrunch reports.
Why did X decide to remove Communities?
The company stated that Communities had become more of a problem than a useful tool.
X’s head of product Nikitia Beer explained that Communities were used by less than 0.4% of all users on the platform, but they accounted for about 80% of all complaints about spam, financial scams, and malware. According to him, supporting such a feature simply made no sense.
He also noted that even those communities that remained active often did not function as intended. Instead of thematic discussions, they turned into platforms for attracting traffic to third-party authors and platforms – in particular, for promoting Kick streamers or so-called compensated clipper communities .
These are communities where members are rewarded for sharing short snippets of other people’s content – such as videos from bloggers or brands. In this way, marketers and authors have tried to increase interest in their main content outside of X.
Beer even ironically called Communities “the Temu version of subreddits,” alluding to a less successful attempt to replicate Reddit's thematic groups model.
Despite the criticism, he acknowledged that there were some successful examples within Communities, but they were too few to justify continuing to support the feature.
Communities will officially stop working on May 6, 2026. Until then, administrators will be able to transfer their members to the new group chat format.
To do this, X is updating XChat , the platform's own messenger, which may become a separate application in the future. The service will feature public links to join group chats that can be pinned to the X feed. One chat can accommodate up to 350 participants, and this limit may be increased in the future.
The company is also expanding other community tools. This week, Premium subscribers launched Custom Timelines , personalized thematic feeds that can be pinned to the main tab. They are formed based on the user's interests and activity in X.
Recently, the platform has significantly accelerated the release of new features. Recent updates include the development of XChat, preparation of payment services, cashtags, buttons to mute individual topics, voice messages in chats, a new photo editor, automatic translation, new reply settings, and personalized feeds.
According to Beer, the X team has reached a pace of launching two to three new features every week, so the platform is likely to see even more changes in the near future.