X has sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter, the open-source project that allowed people to read X posts without logging in or using the X app, demanding that it shut down. The news was shared via a brief message posted to the project's website.
Nitter's website states that on 24 August 2026, cease-and-desist letters were sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project's repository. The message says nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being, with the creator seeking legal advice.
The creator, a developer who goes by the handle Zedeus, told TechCrunch by email that other Nitter instances received similar letters. The letter from X, which TechCrunch has viewed, accuses Nitter of an "unlawful use and circumvention of X's Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data," saying X has evidence that Nitter scraped X data and accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X's rules.
This is not X's first attempt to shut down Nitter. In 2024, Nitter's flagship instance, Nitter.net, went dark temporarily after X rolled out new API restrictions. Nitter worked by fetching public X posts and stripping out ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, giving people a way to read posts without an account or the app.