X sends cease-and-desist to open-source project Nitter over alleged scraping

Nitter, an unfastened root task that allowed radical to work X posts without logging into oregon adjacent opening the X app, has received cease-and-desist letters from X demanding that it unopen down. The quality was shared via a little connection posted to the project’s website, and follows X’s earlier attempts to sound Nitter offline by method means.

The work besides powers a fig of different sites, including XCancel, that let radical to presumption X posts directly.

This isn’t X’s archetypal effort to unopen down Nitter. In 2024, Nitter’s flagship instance, Nitter.net, went acheronian temporarily aft X rolled retired caller API restrictions. Nitter worked by fetching nationalist X posts and past stripping retired the ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, giving radical a clean, clutter-free mode to work posts without an relationship oregon the app.

After that crackdown, those who wanted to big a Nitter lawsuit had to link it to a existent X account, according to the project’s GitHub page. Despite the restrictions, improvement picked backmost up and Nitter instances came backmost online.

This time, X is moving to unopen down Nitter and its instances via ineligible means. Nitter’s website states that the Nitter.net task is offline portion its creator seeks ineligible proposal aft receiving a cease-and-desist letter. That creator, a developer who goes by the grip Zedeus, told TechCrunch by email that different Nitter instances received akin letters.

On Nitter’s website, the connection presently reads:

“On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters person been sent by X Corp. demanding a imperishable takedown of Nitter instances and the project’s repository.

nitter.net is offline and improvement has stopped for the clip being. I’m seeking ineligible proposal and won’t beryllium commenting further connected the specifics for now.

Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter implicit the past 7 years.”

The missive from X, which TechCrunch has viewed, accuses Nitter of an “unlawful usage and circumvention of X’s
Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data,” done its service, saying that X has grounds that Nitter scraped X information and accessed X accounts and league tokens successful usurpation of X’s rules.

Lawyers for X said the actions are successful usurpation of “various authorities and national laws, including, but not constricted to, the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act (§ 143.001 and § 33.02) and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125).” The missive gave Nitter until 5 p.m. EST connected August 25 to unopen down.

X is hardly unsocial successful policing alleged scrapers. Meta has taken numerous scrapers to court, and astir larger societal networks contiguous restrict the usage of third-party readers, forcing users to log successful and entree the site’s contented done the authoritative app, wherever they tin beryllium tracked and shown personalized ads.

It’s an unfortunate improvement for lurkers, fixed that Nitter and its instances offered a useful mode to support up with definite people’s posts connected X without an account. Now those radical volition either request to springiness up that entree or, arsenic X apt hopes, make an relationship and log in.