X Corp Forces Shutdown of Nitter and XCancel via Cease and Desist Notices

X Corp has issued cease and desist letters to the open source project Nitter and the related service XCancel, forcing both to suspend their operations. The notices were sent on August 24, 2025, and demanded the definitive removal of Nitter instances and its project repository. Nitter's maintainer, zedeus, confirmed that nitter.net is offline and development has stopped while he seeks legal advice. The GitHub repository for the project has been archived and set to read only. Nitter and XCancel provided a way for users to view X posts without creating an account, offering a read only experience without ads, JavaScript, or IP tracking. X Corp alleges that Nitter engaged in the illicit use and circumvention of its API, as well as unauthorized data scraping and access to user login tokens. According to reports, X Corp claims these actions violate various state and federal laws in the United States. This follows a previous disruption in January 2024 when API changes by X hindered Nitter's functionality, though the project had since resumed activity. Outlets with a center lean describe Nitter as a privacy focused alternative for users wishing to avoid Elon Musk's platform and its data marketing. In contrast, a center right outlet emphasizes X Corp's allegations of illegal API usage and the violation of platform rules. One center outlet notes a contradiction between these legal actions and Elon Musk's public stance on free speech, as well as X's own use of public data to train its Grok AI.