Nitter

Nitter

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Basic Information
Release Year
Product Type	Frontend
In Production	No
Official Website	https://nitter.net

Nitter was a free and open source privacy-focused frontend for X (Twitter), which was shut down by a cease and desist from X Corp in 2026.

Background

Reading public posts & profiles on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, now generally requires a logged-in account. Nitter was a free, open-source front end that fetched public X posts & stripped out ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, giving people a clean way to read posts without an account or the app. On August 24, 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter and to the related site XCancel demanding a permanent takedown of the instances & the project's code repository; nitter.net went offline & development stopped while the creator sought legal advice.

Account-free reading that Nitter provided

Nitter was a free, open-source front end for X, formerly Twitter, meaning a separate website that displayed X's public content, and it let people read X posts and profiles without an X account. It worked by fetching public X posts and then stripping out the ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript. Because it required no JavaScript & no user account, it gave readers a level of anonymity and privacy. The project described itself as an "alternative Twitter front-end" focused on "privacy and performance."

Nitter carried limitations compared with the official X app. It had no home feed, no infinite scrolling, and no notifications, & users could not post, because there was no option to log in to an account. It was a way to read specific people's posts, not a replacement for an account.

Data a logged-in X account gives up

Reading through Nitter avoided the data collection that comes with a logged-in X session. X Corp's own App Store disclosure lists the data the X app may collect. In the category the disclosure labels "Data Used to Track You", which it defines as data "used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies," X Corp lists Purchases, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Browsing History, Identifiers, and Usage Data. In the category it labels "Data Linked to You," data collected and linked to a user's identity, the disclosure adds Contacts, Search History, and Diagnostics to that list. The disclosure states these data may be used for purposes including "Third-Party Advertising" and "Developer's Advertising or Marketing."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation documented X's tracking defaults years earlier. Writing in May 2017 about a Twitter privacy policy change, the EFF said the company would:

"record and store non-EU users' off-Twitter web browsing history for up to 30 days, up from 10 days in the previous policy."

The EFF wrote that the promised control over user data was on an opt-out basis, "giving users choices only after Twitter has set their privacy settings to invasive defaults," and that opting users into new tracking by default "suggests that Twitter cares more about collecting data than respecting users' choice." TechCrunch has described the general pattern, noting that most large social networks now restrict third-party readers, forcing users to log in and use the official app, "where they can be tracked and shown personalized ads."

• 
  X Corp's own App Store disclosure lists a Data Used to Track You category, defined as data used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, that includes Browsing History and Location.
• 
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported in May 2017 that Twitter would record and store non-EU users' off-Twitter web browsing history for up to 30 days, up from 10 days in the previous policy.

Login requirement imposed in July 2023

After Elon Musk bought Twitter, the platform tightened access for people who were not logged in. The site began requiring people to log in to view tweets & profiles, reversing its longtime practice of letting anyone read the posts. On July 1, 2023, Musk announced daily limits on how many posts an account could read, one day after the login block took effect. Musk described the login block as a "temporary emergency measure" to stop data scraping, writing that "we were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!"

The daily read limits were set at 6,000 posts per day for verified accounts, 600 for unverified accounts, and 300 for new unverified accounts. After backlash, Musk said the thresholds would rise to 800 for unverified accounts & 8,000 for verified accounts, before later settling on 1,000 and 10,000. The higher limit for verified accounts was tied to the platform's paid subscription. At the time, the platform reported more than 200 million worldwide users.

Logged-out access rules that shifted over time

The rules for logged-out access changed over the following days and were applied inconsistently, so no single fixed rule described the behavior across this period. Within days of the July 2023 login wall, individual tweets became viewable again for signed-out users; Engadget editors reported they could once more see individual tweets without being logged in. Profile timelines stayed blocked for signed-out visitors. As one Engadget editor described it, a signed-out visitor could see a user's bio, "but their feed of tweets isn't showing up."

Viewing X without an account, before and after the July 2023 login wall

Before	After
Anyone could read tweets and profiles.	A login is required to view tweets and profiles, enforced with daily read limits; within days, individual tweets became viewable again while profile feeds stayed blocked.

Shutdown from the 2024 guest-account break to the 2026 cease-and-desist

Nitter was first broken by a technical change. In January 2024, X disabled the creation of the guest accounts that Nitter relied on to fetch posts, and remaining instances, the separate copies of the site that volunteers ran, were expected to stop working as their tokens expired. The developer, who goes by the handle Zedeus, announced on GitHub, "Nitter is dead." After that crackdown, hosting a Nitter instance required connecting it to a real X account, & the project relaunched in 2025.

The 2026 shutdown came through legal means. On August 24, 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter and to XCancel, a site that relied on Nitter to display X posts, demanding a permanent takedown of the public instances & the removal of the project's code repository; both went offline, and at the time of Forbes' reporting nearly all popular Nitter instances were down except for one hosted in Singapore. Nitter's website said the project was offline while its creator sought legal advice and would not comment further on the specifics.

The letter from X, which TechCrunch reported it had viewed, accused Nitter of an "unlawful use and circumvention of X's Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data," and said X had evidence that Nitter scraped X data & accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X's rules. According to TechCrunch, lawyers for X said the actions violated:

"various state and federal laws, including, but not limited to, the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act (§ 143.001 and § 33.02) and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125)."

The letter gave Nitter until 5 p.m. EST on August 25, 2026 to shut down.

TechCrunch reported that X's cease-and-desist letter said Nitter's actions violated various state and federal laws, including the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act.

Public agencies that announce through X

Government agencies, especially those sending messages during emergencies, embraced Twitter for its efficiency and scope, & getting accurate information from authorities during disasters is, as the Associated Press put it, "often a matter of life or death." The first reports of a deadly shooting at the University of Virginia in November 2022 came from the college's Twitter accounts, which urged students to shelter in place. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources runs an account that posts wildfire and weather warnings, Austin-Travis County emergency medical services in Texas runs one, and the Oregon Department of Emergency Management uses the platform as well.

This reliance became a cost problem when X began charging for the API access that lets organizations post automated tweets. In 2023, many public services and transport companies faced unaffordable bills to keep using the service. Those automated alerts covered extreme weather, natural disasters, and major incidents such as building fires, & transport bodies used the API to post disruptions to services and station closures. After criticism that the pay-to-post policy could limit public safety and transit alerts, the Washington Post reported that Twitter said it would let government agencies & other public entities share automated warnings free. Even where an agency posts a warning free, a signed-out reader can still hit the login wall on the way to reading it.

See also

• X Corp
• Twitter
• Elon Musk