X sends cease-and-desist to open source project Nitter over alleged scraping
1:44 PM PDT · August 25, 2026
Nitter, an open source project that allowed people to read X posts without logging into or even opening the X app, has received cease-and-desist letters from X demanding that it shut down. The news was shared via a brief message posted to the project’s website, and follows X’s earlier attempts to knock Nitter offline by technical means.
The service also powers a number of other sites, including XCancel, that allow people to view X posts directly.
This isn’t X’s first attempt to shut down Nitter. In 2024, Nitter’s flagship instance, Nitter.net, went dark temporarily after X rolled out new API restrictions. Nitter worked by fetching public X posts and then stripping out the ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, giving people a clean, clutter-free way to read posts without an account or the app.
After that crackdown, those who wanted to host a Nitter instance had to connect it to a real X account, according to the project’s GitHub page. Despite the restrictions, development picked back up and Nitter instances came back online.
This time, X is working to shut down Nitter and its instances via legal means. Nitter’s website states that the Nitter.net project is offline while its creator seeks legal advice after receiving a cease-and-desist letter. That creator, a developer who goes by the handle Zedeus, told TechCrunch by email that other Nitter instances received similar letters.
On Nitter’s website, the message currently reads:
On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters have been sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project’s repository.
nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being. I’m seeking legal advice and won’t be commenting further on the specifics for now.
Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years.
The letter from X, which TechCrunch has viewed, accuses Nitter of an “unlawful use and circumvention of X’s Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data,” through its service, saying that X has evidence that Nitter scraped X data and accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X’s rules.
Lawyers for X said the actions are in violation of “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 to shut down.
X is hardly alone in policing alleged scrapers. Meta has taken numerous scrapers to court, and most larger social networks today restrict the use of third-party readers, forcing users to log in and access the site’s content through the official app, where they can be tracked and shown personalized ads.
It’s an unfortunate development for lurkers, given that Nitter and its instances offered a handy way to keep up with certain people’s posts on X without an account. Now those people will either need to give up that access or, as X likely hopes, create an account and log in.
Andy Dunn’s startup Pie becomes less of an events app and more of a social network
6:00 AM PDT · August 25, 2026
Pie, the social app from Bonobos’ founder Andy Dunn, is taking its mission to connect people in real life one step further. On Tuesday, the startup launched a new communities feature that allows people to establish more permanent homes for their social groups on its app, offering an alternative to group texts, Facebook Groups, and other technologies people use to stay in touch.
Originally founded as an events app in Chicago, Pie is backed by investors including Forerunner, Lightspeed, Accel, and angels like Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, and the app has grown to around 300,000 users.
With its latest feature, Community Homes, the company now hopes to encourage its users to join communities, where events are the natural outcome of those connections, rather than the main draw.
The update arrives at a time when younger people are looking to make more connections in the real world, after so many years of online socializing. Instead of connecting solely through social media apps, they’re looking to use digital tools in ways that lead them to real-world connections.
Pie’s new digital group homepages will offer a place for organizers and group members to connect and build relationships beyond a single event, the company says.
Each “home” has its own community feed and other group management tools, like admin and membership controls, a shareable homepage, and event-planning resources. However, anyone can share events to the group’s feed, not just the group’s admins, to allow for more natural networking. Pie plans to soon add group chats and another feature that would allow members to post more casual bids for connection, like asking if anyone wants to “hang out and craft together” or watch the “Love Island reunion,” for example, without having a particular plan in mind.
The addition of the Community Homes follows on other changes designed to make Pie less about the events themselves, and more about the people who attend them.
Last December, for instance, Pie changed its activity feed to showcase who you knew who was attending an event, rather than just which events were being announced. After the change, time on the app grew from 2 minutes to 10 minutes, the team found. More recently, Pie launched a “favorites” feature that lets users build out their public profiles by adding their favorite interests.
Dunn says he was inspired to build the startup after moving from New York to Chicago, where he initially struggled to find community and friendship. At the same time, a movement around joining social clubs was gaining momentum among Gen Z.
“Run clubs, art markets, watch parties — all these things that we’re hearing about in terms of the cultural movement towards being together again,” Dunn told TechCrunch. “And I felt like if we build software for those social clubs, we can create an environment and an ecosystem where people can start to run into other people and belong to communities and start to have deeper connections,” he added, dubbing Pie a sort of “Reddit for IRL.”
The company has since added Nadya Okamoto, who founded a popular run club called Zoomies in New York, as a co-founder and CMO.
“I would say [Pie is] more like the original promise of Facebook and Reddit — if it wasn’t anonymous and toxic,” she said referring to Reddit. “Rather than leading with events, which is what so many other great platforms do, I think events are more a product of having a great community-building ecosystem on the app.”
While Pie is available anywhere, it has more traction in markets like Chicago, New York, and LA at present.
