X’s Communities feature, once pitched as a haven for niche discussions amid the platform’s chaotic timelines, faces extinction by May 30. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, dropped the news on April 22. Low engagement. Rampant abuse. Half the product team’s time wasted on cleanup. Communities launched in 2021 under Twitter’s banner, before Elon Musk’s takeover and rebrand. Users could build public groups around shared interests—think fandoms, hobbies, finance tips. Posts stayed contained. Feeds filtered to members only. A stab at Reddit-style forums on a real-time feed app. But adoption stalled below 0.4% of users, per Bier’s post . Worse: those groups triggered 80% of spam reports, financial scams, malware alerts. Bier didn’t mince words. “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,” he wrote. The drain?…