X has just revealed it is pulling the plug on Communities, a feature that lets users connect with others who share similar interests and discover content about their favorite topics in one place. The high rate of spam is said to be the reason behind the shutdown of Communities on X.
X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, confirmed the news in a post, adding that fewer than 0.4% of X users were using Communities, yet the feature accounted for 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware on the platform. “It occupied half the team's time some weeks, while the rest of the app suffered,” he said. Bier also noted that X will now focus on XChat, the company’s new messaging platform.
“Of the handful of Communities that succeeded, most were user-acquisition channels for Kick or compensated clipper communities. There are a handful of very cool communities that will have to migrate (e.g., coin collectors, baseball cards, skincare, artists), but that content should really live on Timeline or in chats—instead of a Temu version of subreddits.” Nikita Bier said.
X will shut down Communities on May 6, 2026, and the migration deadline for admins has been extended to May 30. Community admins can either transition to XChat or move to other platforms such as Discord.
X’s head of product also announced the latest updates to XChat to better prepare it for Communities users looking for a new home. He said XChat now supports joinable links for group chats, allowing admins to create and share links directly on their Timeline. Group chats on XChat currently support up to 500 members, with plans to increase the limit to 1,000 in the coming weeks. A standalone XChat app is also under development.
X’s Communities are being shut down due to an influx of spam messages. However, it remains to be seen how the platform plans to prevent similar issues from affecting XChat.
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