X Corp—X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters shutting down privacy-focused, ad-free readers Nitter and XCancel
On August 24, 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to the maintainer of Nitter, a 7-year-old open-source project that let users read X posts without an account, ads, tracking cookies, or JavaScript, and to XCancel, a service built on Nitter. X accused the projects of unlawful circumvention of its API and scraping, citing the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act, and gave a roughly 24-hour deadline. Both services went offline and development on Nitter stopped.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Internet & Web Freedom | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| User Privacy | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.483 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.64)
Evidence (2 signals)
The Register: X sends in the lawyers to shut down open-source Nitter project
The Register corroborated that X's cease-and-desist letters, citing the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act, forced Nitter and XCancel offline within about 24 hours.
TechCrunch: X sends cease-and-desist to open-source project Nitter over alleged scraping
TechCrunch reported X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter's maintainer 'Zedeus' and to XCancel, accusing them of unlawfully scraping and circumventing X's API; both services went offline shortly after.