X Communities – X is ending its Communities feature in May, citing low usage and high abuse. The company is pushing users toward XChat group chats and Grok-powered custom timelines.
X is winding down its Communities feature in May, with the change aimed at cutting back on spam and refocusing how people discover topic-based content.
The news comes from Nikita Bier, X’s Head of Product, who says Communities will be closed on May 30. The feature was introduced before X was acquired and rebranded by Elon Musk, and it allowed people to create, join, and moderate public groups built around specific interests.
At its core. Communities was designed to solve a discovery problem: instead of scrolling through a general feed. users could follow a timeline shaped by the people and subject matter they cared about.. In practice. Misryoum notes the concept made sense—topic-based spaces have long been attractive for niche communities—but the implementation clearly didn’t survive contact with day-to-day platform dynamics.
Bier’s message is blunt about performance and harm.. He says Communities were used by less than 0.4% of users. yet accounted for 80% of spam reports. financial scams. and malware reports.. He also claims the feature consumed significant engineering attention, while other parts of the app underperformed.. For readers, the implication is straightforward: maintaining Communities wasn’t just expensive—it was also a disproportionate pathway for abuse.
There’s also an internal assessment of “what Communities became.” Bier describes many of the most active groups not as genuine interest hubs. but as user-acquisition channels for Kick or compensated “clipper communities.” That’s a reminder that social features can drift from their original purpose when incentives shift—especially when moderation tools and safeguards can’t keep pace with what bad actors try to automate.
So what replaces it?. X is pointing users toward XChat. a new group chat app that can host chats up to 350 people today. with support for up to 1. 000 planned for the future.. Moderators can pin links in Communities so members can join a group chat ahead of the final retirement date. and Misryoum understands the company has extended the transition window beyond the previously proposed May 6 deadline.
On paper. the move is logical: if a feature is underused but abused. you reduce the surface area and redeploy the energy toward a format that may be easier to manage.. Still, group chats are not the same experience as Communities’ separate, interest-based timeline of posts.. Group chats are often fast. active. and attention-demanding. while Communities offered a quieter model—posts organized like a feed you return to when you want.
To recreate the “topic feed” effect, X is leaning on custom timelines powered by Grok.. Bier says these timelines can automatically organize posts into topic-focused feeds such as food, art, or photography.. Misryoum sees the bet here: instead of asking people to create and moderate their own group ecosystems. the platform will try to do more of the curation work itself.
This direction also fits a broader trend across social networks: shifting from community-built structures toward AI-assisted discovery.. When moderation becomes a bottleneck and incentives attract spam. platforms increasingly try to reduce reliance on user-created spaces and replace them with algorithmic or AI-driven organization.. The upside is scale and faster content routing; the risk is that “what you see” becomes more opaque and potentially less aligned with small. specific cultures that don’t map cleanly onto big topic labels.
For users who used Communities to find niche discussion rhythms. the transition may feel like losing a home—because group chat culture is different.. It can be more chaotic, more synchronous, and less suited to long-form conversation built across days.. Meanwhile. readers who mainly wanted a cleaner feed may find custom timelines more practical. even if it’s not the same as belonging to a moderated space.. Either way. Misryoum expects the change to reshape how people form groups on X: fewer public. interest-based communities—more real-time chats and machine-organized timelines.
Looking ahead. the key question is whether X can prevent the new formats from inheriting the same abuses that plagued Communities.. If XChat group chats and Grok timelines scale quickly. the platform will also need to prove that enforcement can keep pace with harassment. scam outreach. and malware spreading—especially during high-visibility transitions like the one now underway.