X is pulling the plug on Communities, one of Twitter’s legacy social features designed to help users gather around shared interests, after admitting that the product failed to gain meaningful traction and became a hotspot for spam, scams, and malware distribution.
The move marks yet another major product shift under X as it continues reshaping its platform around messaging, creator tools, AI-powered feeds, and payments.
TL;DR
- X will shut down Communities on May 6, 2026.
- Community admins have until May 30 to migrate members.
- X says Communities were used by less than 0.4% of users.
- The feature reportedly generated 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware incidents.
- Users are being redirected to XChat, which now supports public join links and larger group sizes.
X confirmed the decision through product executive Nikita Bier, who publicly explained why the feature was being retired.
“Communities had a great vision, but they were used by less than 0.4% of users, yet contributed to 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware on X,” Bier said in a post on X.
Launched in 2021 when the platform was still known as Twitter, Communities was originally positioned as a Reddit-style feature that allowed users to join topic-specific discussion groups around hobbies, industries, sports teams, crypto discussions, and creator fandoms.
However, X said many of these groups evolved into spam-heavy ecosystems that no longer served their intended purpose.
According to Bier, many of the Communities that did manage to grow were often used as user-acquisition channels for external platforms such as Kick or became hubs for paid clipping communities, where users repost creator content to drive engagement elsewhere.
Instead of fixing the feature, X appears to be shifting focus toward its broader messaging ambitions.
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The company is encouraging Communities users to migrate to XChat, its revamped messaging product that may eventually become a standalone app.
XChat now supports public invite links that can be shared across timelines, while group chats currently support up to 500 members, with plans to scale that number to 1,000 users in the coming weeks.
The shutdown also comes as X rolls out AI-driven personalization tools. Earlier this week, the company introduced Custom Timelines, allowing Premium subscribers to create personalized topic feeds powered by xAI’s Grok technology.
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it to X, the company has aggressively experimented with product changes spanning long-form video, creator monetization, payments, AI integrations, and messaging.
The removal of Communities highlights a broader issue many platforms are facing: building online communities is easy, but moderating them at scale, especially amid rising bot activity and AI-generated spam, remains a costly challenge.
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