X will shut down its Communities feature on May 6, 2026, ending a tool that once aimed to connect users around shared interests but now struggles with low engagement and rising abuse. The company said the feature failed to deliver meaningful value, with most users ignoring it while bad actors used it for spam and scams.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, explained the decision in a post on X. He said Communities attracted less than 0.4 percent of users but generated around 80 percent of spam reports, financial scams, and malware activity, which made the feature costly and difficult to manage at scale.
Why X is Removing Communities
X launched Communities in 2021 when it still operated as Twitter, aiming to compete with platforms like Reddit by offering topic-based discussions. Over time, the feature shifted away from its original purpose, as many groups focused on promoting external creators or sharing paid clips instead of building genuine conversations.
Bier also noted that the few successful Communities mostly acted as traffic funnels for other platforms, which reduced their value inside X’s ecosystem. He added that the company will allow admins to migrate members to group chats until May 30.
X now plans to focus on group chats and personalized feeds, with its upcoming XChat app introducing joinable links that support up to 500 members and may expand further soon. The platform has also launched Custom Timelines for Premium users, which let people pin curated feeds based on their interests.
The company continues to roll out updates at a steady pace, including messaging tools, content controls, and new discovery features, as it shifts toward a different approach for building user communities.
