April 23, 2026
Temu to IRC? X’s plot twist
X is shutting down Communities because of low usage and lots of spam
Spam wins, Communities lose — cheers, groans, and “XChat” confusion
TLDR: X is killing Communities for low use and high spam, pushing users into new XChat group chats with join links. Commenters cheered the spam purge, joked about “Temu subreddits,” and got nostalgic—and confused—over the XChat name, debating whether this fix stops scams or just moves them around.
X just pulled the plug on its 2021 “Communities” feature, and the comments are chaos — half celebration, half side‑eye. X’s product chief said only 0.4% of users touched Communities, while they drove 80% of spam and scams. He even dunked on it as a “Temu version of subreddits,” which the crowd instantly turned into bargain‑bin Reddit memes. One user summed up the whiplash with “happy face… not happy face,” cheering the spam purge but mourning the few good groups that actually felt like community.
The next twist: X is steering people into XChat group chats with public join links (up to 500 people now, aiming for 1,000). Cue confusion. A commenter confessed they were “really confused” seeing “XChat,” remembering the old XChat IRC app from the 2000s — cue a wave of “are we back to IRC?” jokes and nostalgia, plus handy links to the vintage client.
Drama-wise, the thread split fast: some applaud cutting a spam swamp that “ate half the team’s time,” others ask if this just moves the mess into DMs with bigger rooms. Meanwhile, power users eye the new Custom Timelines for paid subscribers and groan about yet another pivot as X boasts 2–3 new features a week. The vibe: RIP micro‑subreddits, hello group‑chat era — bring memes, not malware.
Key Points
- •X will shut down Communities on May 6, 2026, citing very low usage (<0.4% of users) and high spam (≈80% of spam reports/scams/malware).
- •Community admins can migrate members to group chats; migration deadline extended to May 30.
- •X is investing in XChat, a messaging service poised to launch as a standalone app, adding joinable group links and raising capacity from 500 to a targeted 1,000 members.
- •X launched Custom Timelines for Premium users to pin personalized topical feeds, part of a shift toward different community approaches.
- •X reports a faster product cadence with recent features like Cashtags, topic mutes, voice notes in chat, a photo editor, automatic translations, new reply settings, and custom timelines; targeting two to three new features per week.