X Is Killing Communities and Replacing Them With XChat Group Links

X confirmed Wednesday it will shut down its Communities feature on May 30th, citing weak engagement, and is pushing users toward encrypted group chats in XChat instead.

Credit: Nikita Bier / X

X is pulling the plug on Communities, the Facebook Groups-style feature it once heavily marketed as a Reddit alternative. Head of Product Nikita Bier confirmed on April 22nd that the feature will be discontinued on May 30th, citing "declining usage" as the reason.

The shutdown comes one day before the launch of XChat, X's standalone encrypted messaging app, which arrives on iPhone and iPad on April 24th. The timing is not coincidental.

What's Replacing Communities?

X has upgraded XChat to now allow users to generate joinable public links for group chats and share them directly on their timeline, removing the need for manual invitations. Followers can instantly join conversations through these links. Group chats currently support up to 500 members per chat, with Bier indicating the limit is expected to increase at least up to 1,000 members per chat in future updates.

In practical terms, X is trading structured, topic-based public feeds for encrypted, link-accessible group messaging. The architectural difference is significant. Communities functioned as semi-public spaces with moderation, rules, and algorithmic discovery. XChat group chats are private conversations that happen to be accessible via a shareable URL.

The Communities feature had been deteriorating quietly well before Wednesday's announcement. New community creation had already been put on hold, the creation option had been removed from the web app, and the iOS app was throwing errors when users attempted to start new communities. The official Communities account on X had been inactive since 2024.

In March, Bier himself had said he was eager to remove Communities, but believed it would trigger a significant backlash.

And here's the backlash we can see today:

IShowSpeed is not happy with X's decision to kill Communities.

The announcement came anyway, with about a two-week countdown attached.

What Community Admins Need to Do Now?

Users currently managing an X Community have a 5-week window before the May 30th deadline. The timeline window was increased from 6th May to 30th May as per the demands of Community admins.

Nikita Bier recommends that administrators create a new XChat group link as soon as possible, pin it to their existing Community page, and direct current members to join the new chat before the old Communities framework is removed entirely.

The advice is simple. The window is tight. Administrators of large Communities with thousands of members face the harder problem: XChat group chats cap at 500 members currently, meaning large communities cannot migrate to a single chat without fragmentation.

X is encouraging users to migrate their communities to group chats within XChat. Even as X moves away from community-focused feeds, other platforms like Threads and Mastodon continue to embrace the format.

XChat, which has been in testing since last year, will allow users to "chat with anyone on X in a private, focused space built for conversation," according to the app's description.

It features end-to-end encryption, no ads, and no user tracking, positioning it as a direct counter to Meta's messaging products, like WhatsApp and Messenger, including Instagram DMs and recently launched Threads Chat.

The move reflects a broader bet by X's leadership that private, encrypted group conversations will retain users more effectively than public topic feeds ever did.

Communities launched with considerable fanfare as a way to carve out niche spaces on the platform. Most users, Bier's data apparently confirmed, never left their main timeline to use them.

XChat's standalone iOS app is set for release on April 24th. Android support has not been announced.