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  • Facebook Community Chats Shut Down - What's The Best Alternative?

    Richard M

    Richard M

    @richard
    Updated: Jan 9, 2026
    Views: 1.7K

    Facebook has shut down Community Chats, leaving thousands of group admins and members without one of the only real-time tools inside Groups.

    As of today, no new chats can be created. Old ones are already read-only and will soon vanish. Honestly, it feels disappointing. For many of us, Chats were where people dropped quick updates, asked small questions, or solved problems in minutes. That part of community life is suddenly gone. So the real question is: what’s the better alternative for our Facebook Groups?

    I’d love to hear from fellow admins. Are you still planning to rely on Facebook? To me, the service has gone from bad to worse. First engagement dropped, now this.

    Just a reminder to all community builders: you don’t really own a Facebook Group. These platforms can kill features anytime without thinking twice about the people who depend on them.

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • 4mos

    Hey Richard - I get the frustration. Community Chats were shut down on August 29, 2025. It's just another example of how little these platforms care for their users. I've spoken with many FB Group owners. Some of them used the chats frequently; but many didn't. I think FB must have had lot of data to decide that Chat's isn't worth continuing.

    Right now, there are few options. Either move your group to WhatsApp (but most people will have privacy concerns). Or simply rely on FB messenger to initiate chats.

    Alternatively, you can migrate your FB Group to Jatra. We are already working on real-time chat feature (with SEO benefits) for our customers. It should be ready within weeks.

    Feel free to schedule a call at your convenient time.

  • Paula Derrenger

    @paulad • 3mos

    My friends have migrated their communities from Facebook Groups to Discord, but those are all small and casual ones. I’m trying to convince the more serious groups to consider moving to Jatra :-)

    I just don’t get why people still host serious communities on Facebook. Community Chats disappeared as if they never existed, and it makes me wonder if Facebook Groups could be shut down just as easily. You really can’t trust these big social media companies.

  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • 4d

    Update: I've talked to a lot of community owners ever since Facebook announced closure of Community Chats. No one expected this move. The serious ones are now rethinking Facebook Groups.

    Community Chats were not 'paused'. They were shut down and existing chats are being removed. No export, no fallback.

    If that doesn't tell you anything about community ownership, I don't know what will. Facebook optimizes for its own roadmap - not how communities actually function day to day.

    There are two main transitions I'm seeing:

    1. The casual groups are picking up WhatsApp or Discord.
    2. The serious ones are moving to owned platforms; where chat is just one layer for real-time interaction.

    Making content searchable has become a priority - because AI and LLMs can't crawl your content on FB.

    I'd love to welcome opinions from fellow community builders. Especially - if you're unhappy with FB's recent actions.

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