Nitter no more? X sends in the lawyers to shut down open source project
Cease and desist letters from firm headed by free speech absolutist
X, the free speech-focused social media platform owned by Elon Musk, has reportedly sent legal cease and desist notices to Nitter and XCancel over alleged data scraping and rule violations. XCancel's homepage now contains a brief statement notifying users that the service has been halted by X Corp., effective immediately. Nitter, maintained by zedeus, has gone offline with development stopped until further notice, as zedeus seeks legal counsel and does not wish to comment further at this time.
Despite the repository remaining on GitHub, it is now marked as archived and read-only, with an explanatory note added to the README.MD file. Nitter allowed users to view posts on X without requiring an account, without utilizing JavaScript or ads, and without tracking users' IP addresses. The service was particularly popular among privacy-conscious individuals as it provided a means to access X content without creating an account or compromising privacy.
Nitter has been a persistent source of conflict with X, having faced shutdowns in the past due to X's removal of the guest account feature in January 2024 and subsequent restrictions. This latest legal action appears to be in response to allegations of data scraping and violations of X's rules. However, X's actions seem contradictory to Musk's own advocacy for free speech and the corporation's own utilization of public X data to train its AI model, Grok.
Despite the availability of alternative platforms like XCancel, accessing posts on X without an account has become significantly more challenging without services such as Nitter and XCancel.
Written by urgent.news from The Register Science's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
