Say Goodbye to Facebook Community Chats — Here’s How to Prepare

If you’ve relied on Facebook Groups to stay in touch with your book club, gaming mates, or neighborhood watch, you may have seen something unsettling: Meta is quietly rolling out notifications that Community Chats will soon disappear from the platform.

Group administrators started receiving pop-ups in Messenger warning about the feature’s impending removal. At first, many assumed it was a bug or technical glitch—there was no formal announcement from Meta about ending a feature that thousands of communities actively use.

But the change is real. Facebook’s updated help page now confirms that “Community chats will be going away soon”, although no specific end date has been provided. This ambiguity has left many admins scrambling to figure out their next steps.

Introduced in 2022, Community Chats were designed to bridge Facebook Groups and Messenger, allowing up to 250 members to have real-time conversations alongside regular posts and comments.

As for why Facebook is dismantling the feature, it’s not entirely clear. Some speculate Meta prefers chats to occur purely within Messenger, while others suggest spam and moderation burdens in groups could be contributing factors.

Before the feature disappears entirely, users have the chance to download their chat history. By tapping “Learn more” on the Messenger notification, you can export conversations via Facebook’s standard data download process, though the time required varies depending on chat size.

Meta is offering Messenger Communities as an alternative. These standalone chat spaces—separate from Facebook Groups—support up to 5,000 members, allow topic-based chats, announcements, and event organization.

The downside? Messenger Communities aren’t integrated with existing Facebook Groups. If, for example, your book club relied on seamless transitions between posts and chats, you’ll now have to manage two distinct spaces.

Many users are also exploring third-party options to replace Community Chats. Discord frequently comes up thanks to its voice channels, file sharing, and bots. Privacy-focused users lean toward Signal or Telegram, while some prefer sticking with basic Messenger threads or even email lists.

The phase-out is happening gradually. Some admins are already receiving notifications, while others haven’t seen any alerts yet. Facebook says chats will first be “paused” — meaning you can view past messages but won’t be able to send new ones — before being permanently deleted.

If your group relies on Community Chats, now is the time to act. Download your conversation history while you still can, evaluate whether Messenger Communities fit your needs, and plan your next move—because this Facebook experiment is winding down.

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