X's Cease-and-Desist Takes Nitter.net Offline Before Deadline
TL;DR
- X gave Nitter until 5 p.m. EST on August 25 to shut down its instances and take down the project's code repository.
- X's letter cites the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act, alleging API circumvention and access to X accounts and session tokens.
- Zedeus, the developer behind Nitter, took nitter.net offline, paused development, and said he is seeking legal advice.
X has sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter, the open source project that let people read X posts without an account, and nitter.net went offline ahead of the company's 5 p.m. EST deadline on August 25, TechCrunch reported.
The letter accuses the project of "unlawful use and circumvention of X's Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data," and says Nitter "scraped X data and accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X's rules." X's lawyers cite the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act (§ 143.001 and § 33.02) and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125).
"nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being," wrote Zedeus, the developer behind Nitter, in a statement thanking "everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years." He said he is seeking legal advice and won't comment further. Other Nitter instances received similar letters. X previously knocked the flagship instance offline in 2024 through API restrictions, but it returned.
Originally reported by techcrunch.com
Read the original article →Original headline: X Sends Cease-and-Desist to Open-Source Nitter Frontend, Nitter.net Goes Offline Before 5pm EST Deadline