X is shutting down Communities because of low usage and lots of spam
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Launched in 2021, when the company was still known as Twitter, Communities were meant to provide the social network’s users with a place to connect with each other around shared interests. Now, X is shutting down the feature for good, saying it was overrun with spam and a headache to manage. Plus, noted X’s head of product Nikitia Bier, hardly anyone was using them. “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 wrote on X, explaining the company’s thinking behind the removal of the high-profile feature. “Of the handful of Communities that succeeded, most were user-acquisition channels for Kick or compensated clipper communities.” We're going to be investing heavily in XChat.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. It occupied half the team's time some weeks, while the rest of the app suffered.…— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) April 23, 2026 In other words, Communities often weren’t being used for their original purpose. Instead, they had become a place focused on driving (often paid) traffic to other online creators outside of X itself. (Clipping is the practice of sharing short clips of another creator’s work or a brand’s video, for which the clipper is compensated. Marketers and creators leverage these communities to generate interest in their original content.) Bier even scoffed at X’s failed Communities project as a “Temu version of subreddits” — a reference to the groups found within the more popular interest-based social network, Reddit. Image Credits:X He did, however, note that there were a few good communities in the mix that will have to migrate elsewhere, but largely suggested that the feature wasn’t worth maintaining given its overall low use. Techcrunch event Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW Communities on X will be shut down on May 6, 2026. Until then, Community admins can migrate their members to the newly revamped group chat experience. To ready itself for the influx of X Community members, XChat — the app’s messaging service, which is poised to launch as a standalone app — will support “joinable” links for group chats. These public links can be shared on X’s timeline and pinned, and support up to 350 members per chat. The group chat may support even more members in the future, Bier suggested. Despite these changes, Bier pointed out that X isn’t giving up on communities; the company will just take a different approach. In addition to the expanded group chats, the company this week launched Custom Timelines for its Premium subscribers, which allow users to pin different topical feeds to their Home tab. These feeds are also curated and personalized to the individual user, based on how they engage with X. X’s product releases and updates have been hitting at a faster pace as of late, with X’s plans for its XChat app and another for payments, plus new features like cashtags, mute buttons for topics, voice notes in chat, a new photo editor, automatic translations, new reply settings, and the new custom timelines. As Bier noted in March, the X team has begun to hit a rhythm of launching two to three net new features per week, meaning there are likely more features still to come. Topics Apps, Apps, communities, Social, social media, X When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Sarah Perez Consumer News Editor Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal.
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