Press X to pay respects. Social Media X-viewing services Nitter and XCancel shut down after threats of legal action X filed a cease-and-desist against Nitter last month. By Anna Washenko Sept.
Nitter is an open-source platform that allowed people to read posts without being logged into X or having an X account. It also powered other services that offered the same indirect access to X posts, including one called XCancel. Nitter and its brethren provided a more private way to view X posts without ads or tracking cookies, as well as allowing people to stay aware of information shared on the platform without adding to the user counts of the Elon Musk-owned service.
In August, X sent a cease-and-desist to Nitter, accusing it of "unlawful use and circumvention of X's Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data." Both Nitter and XCancel briefly shut down after receiving the cease-and-desist, which claimed the services violated X's rules by scraping the social platform's data, but returned to business earlier in September. Over the last few days, though, the pair has gone dark again. Nitter's GitHub repository was archived and moved into read-only mode on September 11, and yesterday XCancel posted a statement to its own site that said service was suspended.
The message from XCancel cited "a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings" as the reason for the break in service and added "We can't share more details." It seems like things may have escalated behind the scenes, so users of Nitter and XCancel will have to wait and see if the platforms are able to fend off the legal action or if the suspensions will become permanent shutdowns.
The privacy-friendly services for viewing X posts without an account have gone dark again after X's escalated legal action. After X threatened legal action last month, Nitter and XCancel, privacy-friendly services for viewing X posts, appear to be officially dead — for real this time.
Nitter, an open source project that let people read X posts without logging in, had been used to power several services, like XCancel and others. But last month, X sent Nitter a cease-and-desist letter over its alleged “unlawful use and circumvention” of X’s API and associated data.
Essentially, X said that Nitter had scraped the social network’s data to access accounts and session tokens in violation of its rules. Despite the threat, Nitter said on its GitHub page that “following legal advice, the Nitter project will continue,” and promised more details would come soon.
In early September, both Nitter and XCancel were up and running again after a short pause. Unfortunately, things have since changed.
Nitter’s GitHub page was archived on Friday, September 11, indicating it’s now in read-only status and can no longer be modified or updated. XCancel, meanwhile, shut its service down on Monday, and published a new message on its home page: “Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice.” Image Credits: XCancel Nitter, which worked by fetching public X posts and then stripping out the ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, gave people a clean, clutter-free way to read posts without an account or the social network’s app.
For X, however, this is not ideal, as it doesn’t want people to access its content without being able to monetize those views with ads. That’s also why Twitter had disallowed third-party apps from accessing its content years ago, wiping out popular services like Twitterrific and Tweetbot along the way.
This wasn’t X’s first attempt to shut down Nitter, but it seems to have worked. Back in 2024, Nitter’s main instance, Nitter.net, temporarily went offline after X rolled out new API restrictions.
After that crackdown, those who wanted to host a Nitter instance had to connect it to a real X account. For lurkers, the services’ closures are a bummer, as they had offered a way to view what was happening on X without having to actually participate on X or help it boost its user numbers.
Nitter did not respond to a request for comment. Topics Apps, Social, Twitter, X When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission.
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