Nitter and XCancel shut down again after new X legal action

Nitter and XCancel, privacy-friendly tools for reading X posts without logging in, appear to be dead again after X pursued fresh legal action against Nitter. Nitter is an open-source project that let people read X posts without an account and had powered other services, including XCancel.

Last month, X sent Nitter a cease-and-desist letter alleging “unlawful use and circumvention” of X’s API and data, saying Nitter had scraped the platform’s data to access accounts and session tokens in violation of its rules. Nitter said on its GitHub page that, following legal advice, the project would continue, and both Nitter and XCancel came back online in early September after a short pause.

That has since changed. Nitter’s GitHub page was archived on Friday, September 11, putting it in read-only status that can no longer be updated. XCancel shut down on Monday, telling users on its homepage: “Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice.”

Nitter worked by fetching public X posts and stripping out ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, letting people read posts without an account or the X app — which is exactly why X doesn’t want it around, since it can’t monetize those views with ads. Twitter took the same approach against third-party apps years ago, killing off Twitterrific and Tweetbot in the process. This isn’t X’s first attempt to shut Nitter down, either: in 2024, its main instance briefly went offline after new API restrictions, after which anyone hosting a Nitter instance had to connect it to a real X account. Nitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Why it matters

X’s latest legal push shows it’s serious about closing the loophole that let people read its content without an account or ads, cutting off one of the last easy ways to browse X anonymously.