- X sent legal letters demanding that Nitter and its copies shut down.
- It let people read X posts without an account, the app or ads.
- Its main site went offline and a related site, XCancel, also shut down.
- Its code will keep going after its developer got legal advice.
- Several independently run copies of it are still online today.
X Corp sent cease and desist letters on August 24, 2026 to Nitter. It is an open source project that let people read X posts without an account, the X app or ads. The letters demand a permanent takedown of the project and its code. Its main site went offline while its developer looks for legal help.
X cease and desist letter to Nitter
Nitter pulled public X posts and stripped out the ads, tracking cookies and JavaScript. That gave anyone a plain, clean page to read a post without an account. XCancel, a separate site that ran on Nitter's code, also stopped its service.
X's letters accuse Nitter of getting around the system that controls access to X's data. The company says it has proof that Nitter grabbed that data and accessed X accounts and the session tokens that keep people logged in, without permission. Its lawyers cite two laws, a Texas law about accessing computers without permission and the federal Lanham Act on trademarks. Nitter had until 5 PM Eastern on August 25 to shut down.
Nitter's developer, who goes by Zedeus, replaced the project's homepage with a notice. The notice says nitter.net is offline while he gets legal advice. He thanked everyone who used or contributed to Nitter over the past seven years. He told TechCrunch that other Nitter instances got similar letters.
Nitter's code page on GitHub now carries an update. It says that after getting legal advice, the Nitter project will keep going. More details are expected soon.
Nitter GitHub project page update
XCancel's homepage now shows a short notice instead of posts. It says the service is suspended again because of a new turn in the legal case. It tells visitors to go back to X itself to find the same content.
A community-run tracker lists other copies of Nitter run by different people. As of today they show as up and running. This isn't the first time X has gone after Nitter. X's 2024 rule changes knocked the main Nitter site offline for a while before it came back.
