Nitter Lives: Project Defies X Corp Takedown Demand, Repo Restored

The privacy-focused Twitter/X front-end Nitter is back from the brink. After X Corp. sent cease-and-desist letters on 24 August 2026 demanding a permanent shutdown of both public Nitter instances and the project’s GitHub repository, the maintainer briefly archived the repo. A README update now confirms the reversal: after consulting legal counsel, the project will continue, with the repository unarchived and further details promised soon.

Nitter routes all traffic through its own backend using Twitter’s unofficial API, meaning users never connect to Twitter directly and are shielded from IP and browser-fingerprint tracking. Its lightweight, ad-free, JavaScript-free pages have made it a staple for privacy-conscious users and for anyone wanting to read public posts without an account. The same commit refreshes the project’s presentation—swapping raw donation addresses for GitHub Sponsors, Patreon, Liberapay, and Ko-fi badges while keeping crypto options—and adds a note that RSS feeds are often disabled on instances due to abuse.

The standoff underscores the ongoing legal pressure X has applied against tools that scrape or proxy its platform, and the practical limits of cease-and-desist letters against AGPLv3-licensed, self-hostable software with no central operator. By opting to fight rather than fold, Nitter signals that open-source front-ends intend to keep operating despite corporate takedown attempts—though how instance operators weigh their own legal exposure remains an open question.