Open-source X front-ends Nitter & XCancel resume service after seeking legal advice

Nitter, the open-source front-end that allowed users to browse X posts without an account, is back online roughly two weeks after going dark. The project's operators took the service offline in late August following cease-and-desist letters sent by X Corp. on 24 August 2026, which demanded the permanent takedown of all public Nitter instances as well as the removal of the project's code repository. XCancel, a similar service built on Nitter's codebase, received an identical letter and was pulled offline around the same time. According to the notice posted at the time, the maintainers halted development while seeking legal advice and declined to comment on the specifics of the case.

According to the claims made in X Corp.'s letters, Nitter stood accused of scraping the platform's user data and circumventing the official API to serve content to visitors without accounts or ads. Now, however, both projects appear to have resumed service after consulting legal counsel. The Nitter source repository on GitHub is once again publicly accessible, hosting its full history of some 1,340 commits under its AGPL-3.0 license, suggesting the project's maintainers no longer view the legal exposure as disqualifying.

The episode highlights the ongoing tug-of-war between X Corp., which has moved aggressively to restrict third-party access to its data, and the self-hosting community that has kept alternatives like Nitter alive. Interestingly, discussions on Hacker News suggest that the number of working Nitter instances may now exceed levels seen prior to the takedown wave, a sign that X's legal pressure may have done little to stem the spread of independently hosted instances. The maintainers have said they won't comment further on the legal specifics, leaving open questions about the basis on which the services have been restored.