X-viewing services Nitter and XCancel shut down after threats of legal action

XCancel

X appears to have been ultimately successful in taking down two services that let people to read the platform's posts from outside of its own site and app. Nitter is an open-source platform that allowed people to read posts without being logged into X or having an X account. It also powered other services that offered the same indirect access to X posts, including one called XCancel. Nitter and its brethren provided a more private way to view X posts without ads or tracking cookies, as well as allowing people to stay aware of information shared on the platform without adding to the user counts of the Elon Musk-owned service.

In August, X sent a cease-and-desist to Nitter, accusing it of "unlawful use and circumvention of X's Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data." Both Nitter and XCancel briefly shut down after receiving the cease-and-desist, which claimed the services violated X's rules by scraping the social platform's data, but returned to business earlier in September.

Over the last few days, though, the pair has gone dark again. Nitter's GitHub repository was archived and moved into read-only mode on September 11, and yesterday XCancel posted a statement to its own site that said service was suspended. The message from XCancel cited "a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings" as the reason for the break in service and added "We can't share more details." It seems like things may have escalated behind the scenes, so users of Nitter and XCancel will have to wait and see if the platforms are able to fend off the legal action or if the suspensions will become permanent shutdowns.