Nitter and XCancel shut down again after X legal action

Privacy-friendly services that let people view X posts without an account appear to have gone dark again after X escalated its legal action. TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reports that Nitter and XCancel may now be closed for good.

Nitter, an open-source project for reading X posts without logging in, powered XCancel and other services. Last month, X sent Nitter a cease-and-desist letter alleging “unlawful use and circumvention” of its API and related data. X said Nitter had scraped data to access accounts and session tokens in violation of its rules.

Nitter said on GitHub that, following legal advice, the project would continue. In early September, Nitter and XCancel were running again after a short pause. Nitter’s GitHub page was archived on Friday, September 11, placing the project in read-only status. XCancel shut down on Monday and said it had to suspend the service again until further notice because of a new development in the legal proceedings.

X has long restricted third-party access to its content, partly because it wants views to be monetized with advertising. In 2024, Nitter’s main instance, Nitter.net, temporarily went offline after new API restrictions required hosted instances to connect to a real X account. Nitter did not respond to a request for comment.