X decided to turn off the Communities feature

The X platform announced that it will disable the Communities feature, which allows users to create groups based on their interests, at the end of May. According to the information shared by the company’s head of product Nikita Bier, low usage rate and security issues are behind this decision. Communities, which were introduced during the Twitter era and continued to exist after Elon Musk, could not reach the expected level of interaction. Despite this, it continued to create a serious operational burden within the platform.

The Communities feature allowed users to come together around certain topics and offered a separate stream containing only content belonging to that group. However, according to the disclosed data, this feature was actively used by only 0.4 percent of X users. On the other hand, it was stated that 80 percent of spam notifications, financial fraud attempts and malware content originate from these domains. This picture means high risk and resource consumption in exchange for limited use.

Bier acknowledges that some users come together around niche topics through Communities. However, it is stated that the most active groups have become channels that direct users to off-platform services or paid content sharing networks. This situation reveals that the feature has moved away from its initial design purpose.

XChat and custom timelines stand out

With the removal of the Communities feature, X is pushing its messaging solution called XChat to enable users to maintain group interaction. This structure, which currently supports group chats of up to 350 people, is planned to be expanded to groups of 1000 people in the future. Additionally, existing community administrators can use the link pinning feature to direct members to new chat groups. The closing date, which was previously announced as May 6, was postponed to May 30.

On the other hand, there are distinct differences between the group chats and Communities experience. Communities offered a calmer, asynchronous flow of content that users could follow at any time. On the other hand, group chats require instant interaction and require constant attention. This change may make a difference in content consumption habits.

In addition, X has introduced the “custom timelines” feature in order to continue following content according to interests. This structure, supported by the Grok artificial intelligence system, automatically organizes content according to topics such as food, art or photography. Thus, users can more easily follow streams focusing on specific topics.

All these changes show that X is directing the in-platform experience to a more centralized and controllable structure. Removing the Communities feature may cause inconvenience for some users. However, considering the low usage rate and security risks, the decision seems technically understandable. The extent to which XChat and private timelines will fill this gap will become clear over time, depending on how user habits will be shaped.