> We have received cease and desist letters. Awaiting legal advice at the moment, but for now expect all nitter instances to remain down for the foreseeable future.
[for all those who - like me - first check the comments before clicking on the link]
b112 · 2026-08-25 18:31:32 UTC
Are they expecting legal advice to take a long tine?! It's fairly reasonable to check with a lawyer first, before damaging yourself by complying.
The legal system gets this concept. Otherwise random, unwarranted desist orders from your enemies could break you.
Anyone can send an request.
Weird.
sillysaurusx · 2026-08-25 18:40:41 UTC
Legal advice costs a lot of money unless you find a lawyer doing it for free, which is rare.
I agree with the spirit of your comment though. More resistance would be a good thing. It’s just unfortunate how it seems to cost like $20k to $100k.
Nitter should put up a request for donations for legal fees. Lots of people are willing.
They also take crypto (see Donations section in the project readme)
conartist6 · 2026-08-26 07:35:24 UTC
(it was me)
ranger_danger · 2026-08-25 22:40:33 UTC
Getting legal advice can absolutely take a long time, and the first thing they'll probably tell most people in this situation is "turn it off for now until we can do more research and collect money from you."
However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.
If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D. And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.
> Anyone can send an request.
As for emails, I think BIMI has solved this for some time now, at least for large companies.
b112 · 2026-08-25 22:57:51 UTC
"only damage". That's the damage. Five 9s is a thing, because being down means you lose market, your brand is harmed, and no one wants to use you. No one complies with 'cease and desist' orders before seeing if there's any meat at all. No one.
And the legal system "gets that". Reasonable compliance isn't "Oh, someone sent me a C&D. I should destroy my entire business on the off change it makes sense to do so. I'll just raze everything to the ground, hoping that it's better than just... having everything razed to the ground through a suit."
Just.. no. The legal system knows that due diligence is not simply complying, but instead taking time to validate the claim, see if it makes sense, and so on. After all, if the matter were truly urgent, an injunction could easily be obtained.
ranger_danger · 2026-08-25 23:22:13 UTC
I don't think anyone was making money on nitter instances anyway, I don't see much in the way of any "brand" or business to lose... and lose to who? Not like there's a competitor. This is just a side project not worth playing games with IMO.
I wouldn't consider temporarily disabling a side project "razing the project to the ground" either.
> no one wants to use you
How do you know this was ever a project goal? Most FOSS projects I talk to have no interest in actively trying to gain more users on purpose.
b112 · 2026-08-25 23:47:34 UTC
I was having a generic conversation about the risks to continue service, when handed a C&D, prior to reasonable assessment time. And my point was? There is none.
This helps to give optics into what to do, when served a plate of absurdity.
And if this C&D is caved to, then so will future ones, and Nitter won't have any use anyhow.
ranger_danger · 2026-08-26 01:03:21 UTC
> And if this C&D is caved to, then so will future ones, and Nitter won't have any use anyhow.
I don't agree with any of that but ok. It's not like they can stop instances in other countries they have no jurisdiction over, so I don't think its "use" will suddenly vanish.
thayne · 2026-08-26 02:30:20 UTC
Most of the C&D cases I've heard about on HN, have been against small open source projects that absolutely don't have the legal resources to fight it, and I'm sure the ones sending that letter know it. I suspect that companies are much more likely to send a C&D to an individual or small community than to a company with a legal team.
account42 · 2026-08-26 11:18:38 UTC
Everyone has the resources to fight a C&D since all it takes is a middle finger. Now if they actually have a case against you then sure its harder, but that case , if it exists, existed before they ever sent you a C&D. If you are scared about X being mad at you then the sensible thing to do is to not create something that pisses them off in the first place.
account42 · 2026-08-26 11:15:40 UTC
> Getting legal advice can absolutely take a long time, and the first thing they'll probably tell most people in this situation is "turn it off for now until we can do more research and collect money from you."
Normally I would agree, but Nitter has been an adversarial integration from the start. I would expect them to have anticipated this attack.
> However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.
Which is significant damage. By complying too eagerly you give those notices power that they would not otherwise have.
> If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D.
If you're of that mindset why create Nitter in the first place. And they are pretty much guaranteed public (including financial support) for any lawsuit if they ask for it since Nitter is something a lot of people want to exist.
> And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.
It's ultimately not that smart when you're in the "business" of creating Nitter because it just tells the bullies that all that's needed is a nicely formatted letter and you'll fold.
account42 · 2026-08-26 11:08:08 UTC
Yes and it's not like there hasn't been ton of precedent for scraping recently, including by X themselves, so why would they expect to not be able to win this?
tossit444 · 2026-08-25 18:35:25 UTC
From Nitter matrix group:
basically, it demands that I:
1. Permanently take down nitter.net and the GitHub repository, and delete all "X Data" in both
2. Stop all use of the "Twitter" and "X" marks
3. Cease all access to X data, including copies
4. Delete all X account credentials and session tokens
5. Confirm compliance in writing within three business days
The claims asserted are breach of X's Terms of Service, Developer Agreement and Developer Policy; the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act; and the Lanham Act. It threatens litigation against me personally. X states it has also sent notice to GitHub and to my domain registrar.
pessimizer · 2026-08-25 19:48:58 UTC
> 1. Permanently take down nitter.net and the GitHub repository[...]
This is the one that they know they have absolutely no grounds to demand, which is why they started with it. Everything else can be conformed with without even really damaging Nitter (the project.)
> 4. Delete all X account credentials and session tokens
could be trouble for individual servers, but is on legally shaky ground, and servers can simply go down at the first strong challenge and open back up under another name. Nitter the project doesn't need to have any credentials or tokens.
phatfish · 2026-08-25 20:36:48 UTC
So much free speech.
scosman · 2026-08-25 20:57:05 UTC
A new case where the "free as in speech, not free as in beer" clarification helps.
pjot · 2026-08-25 21:22:14 UTC
Where do you get this free beer?
jack_pp · 2026-08-25 21:55:23 UTC
friends
tom_alexander · 2026-08-25 22:17:13 UTC
This is why I prefer "gratis" vs "libre" instead of "free as in speech" vs "free as in beer". gratis/libre are clear and succinct.
As for an actual answer: parties, weddings.
amlib · 2026-08-25 22:50:34 UTC
I'm sure this has already been answered somewhere in slashdot hundreds of years ago, but why not just go with "free as in freedom"? And perhaps use the word freedom insted of free when possible
tom_alexander · 2026-08-25 23:31:43 UTC
Because freedom isn't free!
But in all seriousness, "free as in freedom" seems fine to me but it is replacing the already unambiguous "free as in speech". You're still stuck with the sometimes-confusing "free as in beer" and they're still cumbersome compared to gratis/libre.
kwarcode · 2026-08-26 00:29:23 UTC
Weddings tend to have a free speech or two, too!
thayne · 2026-08-26 02:32:18 UTC
That only works if your audience knows what libre and gratis mean.
nativeit · 2026-08-26 03:03:10 UTC
I think the free speech is equally elusive in this context.
antonvs · 2026-08-25 21:51:34 UTC
Is this what free speech absolutism looks like?
dminik · 2026-08-25 23:33:00 UTC
The global town square is locked up in a gated community.
account42 · 2026-08-26 11:22:49 UTC
Why not use those three days (or any time that can still be considered reasonable to respond to this) to contact the EFF before responding by taking down the site?
bambax · 2026-08-25 19:01:47 UTC
They should respond with a poop emoji, which is what Musk sends to people he doesn't care about.
zamadatix · 2026-08-25 20:31:29 UTC
Musk can afford to be childish about legal challenges because the outcome doesn't really matter to him.
anigbrowl · 2026-08-25 22:38:15 UTC
You're 100% correct, but but it's exactly the sort of thing that would cause him to go on a tear and say something admissible.
zamadatix · 2026-08-26 02:28:07 UTC
Hell of a bet, about the same tipped scales as the original problem.
alsetmusic · 2026-08-25 23:18:33 UTC
I hate how a jerk like him can tie up the courts with frivolous lawsuits while regular people have their cases slowed down for things that actually matter.
zamadatix · 2026-08-27 13:36:22 UTC
Indeed, let the fines better scale to the wealth!
orange999 · 2026-08-25 21:02:38 UTC
"For the forseeable future" doesn't sound very good. It's a vague phrase, but it usually isn't used to describe something that will change next week or even next month.
"For the time being" would have sounded like less bad wording than "for the forseeable future."
spiderfarmer · 2026-08-25 17:32:36 UTC
Let a thousand Nitters bloom.
bbg2401 · 2026-08-25 17:34:31 UTC
> You've gotta be kidding me. Unfortunately everyone still uses the Nazi app so this is actually a big problem.
If the commenter truly believes it’s a Nazi app, why are they the slightest bit upset to lose access to any version of it?
It’s astonishingly easy to not use toxic social media platforms.
suddenlybananas · 2026-08-25 17:37:16 UTC
You can want to read something someone else has posted without giving your data to the owner of Twitter.
bbg2401 · 2026-08-25 17:48:44 UTC
So, it’s a nazi app that you can’t help but continue to read.
I don’t get it.
suddenlybananas · 2026-08-25 17:58:30 UTC
Well, when heads of state, important ministers, politicians etc post things there, it's an unfortunate reality that you sometimes have to read it to stay in the loop. (I think Nazi app is a bit of an overstatement myself)
BizarroLand · 2026-08-25 18:30:00 UTC
Rather than calling it a Nazi app, it's more apt to say it's a Corporate Oligarchy app.
phoghed · 2026-08-25 18:26:59 UTC
- it’s a nazi app
- some important non nazi information exists only on this app
- the nazi app is being harmed by nitter
Seems like using nitter would align with their worldview. Curious how you’ve failed to make this connection?
rireads · 2026-08-26 05:53:23 UTC
What's not to get? The statements don't conflict
bdangubic · 2026-08-25 17:37:25 UTC
I would not say astonishingly as most people are full-on addicted to these platform and addictions are hard to kick, but definitely doable (9 years for me)
bbg2401 · 2026-08-25 17:52:16 UTC
I suppose my bemusement comes from the fact that the commenter describes it in the most extreme terms (a nazi app!), and yet cannot kick the habit.
MeetingsBrowser · 2026-08-25 17:38:52 UTC
You answered your own question.
> Unfortunately everyone still uses the Nazi app
If your local town government for example only posts city updates to twitter, your options are to make a twitter account, use something like nitter, or miss out on updates.
bbg2401 · 2026-08-25 17:49:57 UTC
Is this the case where you are?
If so, that’s appalling.
MeetingsBrowser · 2026-08-25 17:53:18 UTC
yes. Lots of smaller city governments are barely capable of running a functioning website.
Twitter used to be an easy and free way to distribute updates publicly. That has changed, but the inertia is still there and there isn't a good low friction alternative.
seanw444 · 2026-08-25 18:08:08 UTC
There's that, and the fact that the "town square" for my city ended up being a city citizens page on Facebook. So we've got the city government and the sheriff's office posting updates to X and/or Facebook, and anything coming from the residents can only really be seen on Facebook. I don't want an X or Facebook account. I guess I'm just supposed to remain in the dark if I don't submit to corpos. The merger of corporation and state is very real, and I guess it often arrives unintentionally rather than intentionally.
Narretz · 2026-08-25 17:43:44 UTC
my guess is many people use nitter to do automatic scraping of Twitter for various projects, i.e. they can't believe they "have" to do it because so many people still use Twitter.
rererereferred · 2026-08-25 17:48:09 UTC
I do not use Twitter but some people who do interesting things somehow still do and only post about them there. It's all so tiring.
gempir · 2026-08-25 17:48:24 UTC
I can't even read specific public transport updates in my city because they only post those to Twitter, only vague messages on their own website.
bbg2401 · 2026-08-25 17:57:06 UTC
That’s a rather poor state of affairs but is surely an issue to take up with our local authorities. Is that their only communication channel? There’s no website, RSS feed or at least mirror feed on an alternative platform?
We should have prevented Twitter/X and other platforms becoming quasi-official communications channels for public institutions.
robin_reala · 2026-08-25 17:58:48 UTC
Have you thought about complaining to your public transport provider?
ball_of_lint · 2026-08-25 22:39:26 UTC
When fighting Nazis, it's quite valuable to be able to hear what they're saying and know where they're going.
rvz · 2026-08-25 22:57:24 UTC
Sounds like you are their biggest fans to care so much?
ball_of_lint · 2026-08-26 02:59:31 UTC
Wow, uh, not the level of discourse I expect out of HN.
sophrosyne42 · 2026-08-26 13:18:33 UTC
Given how the opening was calling twitter a nazi app, there should be no surprise that the discourse is this unproductive and shitty
ball_of_lint · 2026-08-27 00:08:21 UTC
So first, there is at least some validity to calling it a nazi app. Elon Musk owns the app, and he gave a nazi salute during a speech for Trump's inauguration. People disagree about it but it is a well known and discussed thing, not a random insult.
While I think bgg2401's comment was wrong, it was at least interacting with the content in a respectful way. rvz in contrast, did not at all address the argument I made, and was the first comment in the chain to break the site guidelines. Breaking the site guidelines _should be surprising_. There's a reason they're there.
rvz · 2026-08-27 14:01:36 UTC
> So first, there is at least some validity to calling it a nazi app.
In your opinion.
> Elon Musk owns the app, and he gave a nazi salute during a speech for Trump's inauguration.
He dug himself in that hole through those bad optics, but that does not mean the entire app is a "Nazi app" that you are claiming since actual Nazi content (and accounts) get removed as soon as it is reported.
> rvz in contrast, did not at all address the argument I made, and was the first comment in the chain to break the site guidelines. Breaking the site guidelines _should be surprising_. There's a reason they're there.
You did not make an argument.
Not only you are diluting the word "Nazi" to become meaningless, you broke the guidelines via name-calling in the first place, and called everyone who uses the X app a Nazi. There are dedicated actual Nazi Mastodon instances in the fediverse, but that doesn't mean Mastodon is a Nazi platform.
But since you are looking for actual Nazis, you should look for them where they actually are many of them (Gab, 4chan, etc). Eventually you will find them.
I don't think what I said in my first post is name-calling - I was addressing the point the parent commenter made, not saying anything about whether or not I thought the app was in fact a nazi app or not.
rvz · 2026-08-28 04:55:07 UTC
It is not. Even all the major chatbots (Claude Fable 5, ChatGPT 5.6 Sol, Gemini 3 Pro, Grok 4.5) disagree with your assessment and each of the articles when we are objectively talking about actual Nazi social media platforms.
It's absurd to label an entire platform that moderates on banning and censoring Nazi content as a Nazi platform. Even with Mastodon which has multiple active uncensored neo-Nazi instances with zero moderation, it does not mean Mastodon itself is a Nazi platform. Only those specific instances are.
What actually are objectively Nazi social platforms are: nationalist[.]s_ocial, Gab, 4chan, Terrogram, "Stormfront" and "Iron March".
So you should actually look there, since you said:
> My argument is roughly that knowing what your enemy is doing is value. As evidenced by, say, the Enigma machine.
It seems you are more obsessed with Nazis than everyone else here. I have now given you the places where to look for them and where the majority of those actual Nazis are hiding.
NoboruWataya · 2026-08-25 17:36:01 UTC
What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Clearly the exodus that happened when Musk took it over didn't kill it but I do seem to see fewer links to it than I used to.
Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.
q8zd3 · 2026-08-25 17:38:25 UTC
It's a social experiment about [variable] universal basic income
rogerrogerr · 2026-08-25 17:43:46 UTC
Can you expand on this? I'm not tracking.
nemomarx · 2026-08-25 17:50:15 UTC
They have those payouts for check marks? A lot of people post click bait for views to bring in small amounts of money, usually from a poorer country I think
q8zd3 · 2026-08-25 21:53:52 UTC
Verified profiles get money based on engagement rate of their posts, only from other verified profiles; I don't think I need to tell you the quality of said posts, AI slop included.
They are literally getting money (not making) without producing anything and that aligns with Elon's world view of a jobless civilization driven by AI and robots.
rogerrogerr · 2026-08-27 22:34:49 UTC
Are they not producing anything? I agree that I place no value on slop, but my grandparents sure do.
Maybe what they're producing is net negative value at the societal level, but (unfortunately?) they're not producing nothing.
giancarlostoro · 2026-08-25 17:43:30 UTC
There's people from all walks of life and all corners of the internet on there still, good and bad. Twitter was always a darned mess, the only difference now is you can't just report people and bully them off the site.
Contrast to me trying to open BlueSky, and seeing death threats and other insane things. I've also heard (though never personally seen, nor do I want to) that BlueSky has a CSAM problem. Those two factors alone kept me from even trying it out.
What's really weird is there were a ton of claims that disappeared, about how X was full of bots, but X is the opposite of full of bots. Maybe there's one or another, but they're highly under the radar, X has improved their bot problem drastically.
Edit (tweaked some words, and wanted to add):
Then there was Threads, I am not in any way interested in "New Twitter" by Mark Zuckerberg, no thanks.
smith7018 · 2026-08-25 17:47:05 UTC
I genuinely can't take this comment seriously if you think BlueSky has a CSAM and bullying problem while staying on X.
golf1052 · 2026-08-25 17:50:39 UTC
Yeah, there were numerous news reports about the AI CSAM problem on X
I really can't deal with BlueSky. I wanted to because I had a lot of good "starter packs" for NeoVim and OCaml development. Nerd stuff is the reason I visit these sites. The problem is, I start following people and it almost always turns into politics. I may even AGREE with the person's politics but I hate reading and talking about it. God forbid I ever disagree.
Funny thing though. I've heard the claims of "CSAM on Twitter" and now "CSAM on BlueSky". I've never had any of that ransomly show up. I do still have 2 or so random follows from clip-art female avatars with no tweets - per week. I've never quite figured out how that scam is supposed to work. I used to block 'em, now I ignore 'em.
anonzzzies · 2026-08-25 17:50:47 UTC
Never had issues with bluesky, but i'm a lurker and I have a llm filtering (here on HN, X, bluesky, reddit etc) which removes political stuff and boosts stuff I likely will like.
hypfer · 2026-08-25 17:57:26 UTC
From what I heard, bluesky (unsurprisingly) has the exact same toxicity problems as twitter.
iirc there were newer instances too, but why bother reading on that, when you can just look at how the system is built.
Twitter and Twitter-ish systems are just fundamentally anti-human.
The same can be said about most of social media, actually, but Twitter is high up on the worst offender list, and Bluesky just cloned it. Again.
cagey · 2026-08-25 18:38:45 UTC
I found this[0] to be an interesting perspective:
"Bluesky Isn't a Bubble. It's a Containment Dome.
Pray that Bluesky doesn't die entirely — we need it so the worst liberal posts are kept in a place where the broader public won't ever see them."
It should've been like that with Twitter too, but Twitter unfortunately became the clubhouse of the journalist class, and they kinda did control the media.
So they made everyone believe that whatever social ingroup infighting skirmish bs is happening would be relevant to the people at large.
Elon saw that, thought "hey I want that" and bought it - not changing anything about it other than giving the microphone to even worse people.
While everyone thinks they can call themself "journalist" (no matter the merit, ethics or similar), at the very least, all of their infighting led to a certain baseline of quality back then. So there was that.
Oh well. Many such cases. Someone not interested in changing the system but changing who is on top I mean.
__
Welp, that Josh Barro guy you linked seems equally unpleasant looking at his website's front page.
cmrdporcupine · 2026-08-25 19:03:19 UTC
Yep, if there's a recommendation algorithm and a "this is my megaphone" style posting, it just inevitably becomes an echo chamber of narcissism.
Even Mastodon which has no algorithm trends towards the obnoxious when you start going into various corners.
As much as I hate Facebook now, the OG Facebook which was strictly a feed of "this is what my friends and family are posting" and nothing else... was ideal. Not public. Just private in an inner group.
the much maligned Google+ honestly had a good model too.
senderista · 2026-08-25 21:29:20 UTC
Don't forget FriendFeed!
SmirkingRevenge · 2026-08-26 13:37:47 UTC
FWIW, I've found it to be far less toxic as a lurker. Most people act sane and fairly nice.
Bluesky at least has really robust blocking features. Using them really reduces the toxicity that bubbles into your feed.
I think guys like Singal don't really like Bluesky because their engagement model just doesn't work as well there as it does on twitter. That faintly snarky, passive-aggressive, often concern-trollish, kind of rage-baiting for attention, both negative and positive, kind of tone.
I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to work as well, exactly. Maybe it's the block features. Maybe it's the feeds. Maybe its the user demographics that resulted from the self-selected twitter exodus.
I think it's a combination of all those factors - but keep in mind, one reason you see some of these people write polemics against Bluesky is because they just don't know how to get attention there.
Most users would probably rather block than respond to the bait - that practice got baked into the early bluesky culture. So the only ones left to take the bait are the unhinged, death-threatening, types.
dokyun · 2026-08-25 18:42:04 UTC
> Nerd stuff is the reason I visit these sites.
Fedi is a lot better if you want nerd stuff specifically, running instances attracts a lot of hackers who're geared toward it. The big instances are pretty much the same shlock you get on Twitter/Bluesky but there's a lot of cool people in the margins (tip: look for instances that aren't running Mastodon).
nobleach · 2026-08-26 12:26:13 UTC
You just made me realize how much I miss IRC. Pre-911, one could go for months and months without hearing a single thing about politics. And this is with lots of folks from Berkley in the chats!! (again, not saying Berkley politics are a "problem" - just that I prefer to talk about tech)
ceroxylon · 2026-08-25 18:59:28 UTC
I want to like Bluesky but have run into the same issue with politics as you.
Worse yet, people get so blinded that they lose the plot entirely... I asked someone about the accounting of a Palestinian fund raiser they were promoting.
They got very defensive so I looked into it, and it was a scam. I pointed this out to the poster to let them know, and they wrote a snide response which got their followers to brigade me.
xhevahir · 2026-08-25 19:28:10 UTC
I don't know whether it's a founder effect of the users that fled there from X, or the mass-blocking features, but no site is as good at enforcing political orthodoxy as Bluesky. A near perfect echo chamber.
senderista · 2026-08-25 21:27:43 UTC
Oh I think Mastodon at least comes close.
stephen_g · 2026-08-25 23:18:48 UTC
I find Mastodon fairly chill and a fairly wide range of opinions, I think part of it is that Bluesky attracts most of the more extreme political people who might otherwise go to Mastodon. On Mastodon people are more likely to just block people who they really don't like and move on so there aren't really pile-ons and all that and different opinions co-exist.
You obviously get more of the people with more 'popular' political opinions in the Trending feed but that's not the default and you don't have to follow that if you can find enough good people or hashtags to follow.
senderista · 2026-08-25 23:37:14 UTC
I don't really see coexistence of meaningfully different political positions at all on Mastodon (I think anyone resembling say a centrist Democrat would be quickly hounded off the platform), but that might be a consequence of who I follow.
Comments
> We have received cease and desist letters. Awaiting legal advice at the moment, but for now expect all nitter instances to remain down for the foreseeable future.
[for all those who - like me - first check the comments before clicking on the link]
The legal system gets this concept. Otherwise random, unwarranted desist orders from your enemies could break you.
Anyone can send an request.
Weird.
I agree with the spirit of your comment though. More resistance would be a good thing. It’s just unfortunate how it seems to cost like $20k to $100k.
Nitter should put up a request for donations for legal fees. Lots of people are willing.
They also take crypto (see Donations section in the project readme)
However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.
If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D. And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.
> Anyone can send an request.
As for emails, I think BIMI has solved this for some time now, at least for large companies.
And the legal system "gets that". Reasonable compliance isn't "Oh, someone sent me a C&D. I should destroy my entire business on the off change it makes sense to do so. I'll just raze everything to the ground, hoping that it's better than just... having everything razed to the ground through a suit."
Just.. no. The legal system knows that due diligence is not simply complying, but instead taking time to validate the claim, see if it makes sense, and so on. After all, if the matter were truly urgent, an injunction could easily be obtained.
I wouldn't consider temporarily disabling a side project "razing the project to the ground" either.
> no one wants to use you
How do you know this was ever a project goal? Most FOSS projects I talk to have no interest in actively trying to gain more users on purpose.
This helps to give optics into what to do, when served a plate of absurdity.
And if this C&D is caved to, then so will future ones, and Nitter won't have any use anyhow.
I don't agree with any of that but ok. It's not like they can stop instances in other countries they have no jurisdiction over, so I don't think its "use" will suddenly vanish.
Normally I would agree, but Nitter has been an adversarial integration from the start. I would expect them to have anticipated this attack.
> However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.
Which is significant damage. By complying too eagerly you give those notices power that they would not otherwise have.
> If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D.
If you're of that mindset why create Nitter in the first place. And they are pretty much guaranteed public (including financial support) for any lawsuit if they ask for it since Nitter is something a lot of people want to exist.
> And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.
It's ultimately not that smart when you're in the "business" of creating Nitter because it just tells the bullies that all that's needed is a nicely formatted letter and you'll fold.
basically, it demands that I:
1. Permanently take down nitter.net and the GitHub repository, and delete all "X Data" in both 2. Stop all use of the "Twitter" and "X" marks 3. Cease all access to X data, including copies 4. Delete all X account credentials and session tokens 5. Confirm compliance in writing within three business days
The claims asserted are breach of X's Terms of Service, Developer Agreement and Developer Policy; the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act; and the Lanham Act. It threatens litigation against me personally. X states it has also sent notice to GitHub and to my domain registrar.
This is the one that they know they have absolutely no grounds to demand, which is why they started with it. Everything else can be conformed with without even really damaging Nitter (the project.)
> 4. Delete all X account credentials and session tokens
could be trouble for individual servers, but is on legally shaky ground, and servers can simply go down at the first strong challenge and open back up under another name. Nitter the project doesn't need to have any credentials or tokens.
As for an actual answer: parties, weddings.
But in all seriousness, "free as in freedom" seems fine to me but it is replacing the already unambiguous "free as in speech". You're still stuck with the sometimes-confusing "free as in beer" and they're still cumbersome compared to gratis/libre.
"For the time being" would have sounded like less bad wording than "for the forseeable future."
If the commenter truly believes it’s a Nazi app, why are they the slightest bit upset to lose access to any version of it?
It’s astonishingly easy to not use toxic social media platforms.
I don’t get it.
- some important non nazi information exists only on this app
- the nazi app is being harmed by nitter
Seems like using nitter would align with their worldview. Curious how you’ve failed to make this connection?
> Unfortunately everyone still uses the Nazi app
If your local town government for example only posts city updates to twitter, your options are to make a twitter account, use something like nitter, or miss out on updates.
If so, that’s appalling.
Twitter used to be an easy and free way to distribute updates publicly. That has changed, but the inertia is still there and there isn't a good low friction alternative.
We should have prevented Twitter/X and other platforms becoming quasi-official communications channels for public institutions.
While I think bgg2401's comment was wrong, it was at least interacting with the content in a respectful way. rvz in contrast, did not at all address the argument I made, and was the first comment in the chain to break the site guidelines. Breaking the site guidelines _should be surprising_. There's a reason they're there.
In your opinion.
> Elon Musk owns the app, and he gave a nazi salute during a speech for Trump's inauguration.
He dug himself in that hole through those bad optics, but that does not mean the entire app is a "Nazi app" that you are claiming since actual Nazi content (and accounts) get removed as soon as it is reported.
> rvz in contrast, did not at all address the argument I made, and was the first comment in the chain to break the site guidelines. Breaking the site guidelines _should be surprising_. There's a reason they're there.
You did not make an argument.
Not only you are diluting the word "Nazi" to become meaningless, you broke the guidelines via name-calling in the first place, and called everyone who uses the X app a Nazi. There are dedicated actual Nazi Mastodon instances in the fediverse, but that doesn't mean Mastodon is a Nazi platform.
But since you are looking for actual Nazis, you should look for them where they actually are many of them (Gab, 4chan, etc). Eventually you will find them.
My argument is roughly that knowing what your enemy is doing is value. As evidenced by, say, the Enigma machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
I don't think what I said in my first post is name-calling - I was addressing the point the parent commenter made, not saying anything about whether or not I thought the app was in fact a nazi app or not.
It's absurd to label an entire platform that moderates on banning and censoring Nazi content as a Nazi platform. Even with Mastodon which has multiple active uncensored neo-Nazi instances with zero moderation, it does not mean Mastodon itself is a Nazi platform. Only those specific instances are.
What actually are objectively Nazi social platforms are: nationalist[.]s_ocial, Gab, 4chan, Terrogram, "Stormfront" and "Iron March".
So you should actually look there, since you said:
> My argument is roughly that knowing what your enemy is doing is value. As evidenced by, say, the Enigma machine.
It seems you are more obsessed with Nazis than everyone else here. I have now given you the places where to look for them and where the majority of those actual Nazis are hiding.
Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.
They are literally getting money (not making) without producing anything and that aligns with Elon's world view of a jobless civilization driven by AI and robots.
Maybe what they're producing is net negative value at the societal level, but (unfortunately?) they're not producing nothing.
Contrast to me trying to open BlueSky, and seeing death threats and other insane things. I've also heard (though never personally seen, nor do I want to) that BlueSky has a CSAM problem. Those two factors alone kept me from even trying it out.
What's really weird is there were a ton of claims that disappeared, about how X was full of bots, but X is the opposite of full of bots. Maybe there's one or another, but they're highly under the radar, X has improved their bot problem drastically.
Edit (tweaked some words, and wanted to add):
Then there was Threads, I am not in any way interested in "New Twitter" by Mark Zuckerberg, no thanks.
- June 2025: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/x-accounts-peddle-chi...
- Jan 2026: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/musk-grok-ai-bot-safeguard-s...
- Mar 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/17/x-csam-ch...
Funny thing though. I've heard the claims of "CSAM on Twitter" and now "CSAM on BlueSky". I've never had any of that ransomly show up. I do still have 2 or so random follows from clip-art female avatars with no tweets - per week. I've never quite figured out how that scam is supposed to work. I used to block 'em, now I ignore 'em.
There was I think this piece of writing in 2024 (just googled it, don't quote me on that) https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-thr...
iirc there were newer instances too, but why bother reading on that, when you can just look at how the system is built.
Twitter and Twitter-ish systems are just fundamentally anti-human. The same can be said about most of social media, actually, but Twitter is high up on the worst offender list, and Bluesky just cloned it. Again.
"Bluesky Isn't a Bubble. It's a Containment Dome.
Pray that Bluesky doesn't die entirely — we need it so the worst liberal posts are kept in a place where the broader public won't ever see them."
[0] https://www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-isnt-a-bubble-its-a-cont...
And same is true for the fediverse.
It should've been like that with Twitter too, but Twitter unfortunately became the clubhouse of the journalist class, and they kinda did control the media. So they made everyone believe that whatever social ingroup infighting skirmish bs is happening would be relevant to the people at large.
Elon saw that, thought "hey I want that" and bought it - not changing anything about it other than giving the microphone to even worse people.
While everyone thinks they can call themself "journalist" (no matter the merit, ethics or similar), at the very least, all of their infighting led to a certain baseline of quality back then. So there was that.
Oh well. Many such cases. Someone not interested in changing the system but changing who is on top I mean.
__
Welp, that Josh Barro guy you linked seems equally unpleasant looking at his website's front page.
Even Mastodon which has no algorithm trends towards the obnoxious when you start going into various corners.
As much as I hate Facebook now, the OG Facebook which was strictly a feed of "this is what my friends and family are posting" and nothing else... was ideal. Not public. Just private in an inner group.
the much maligned Google+ honestly had a good model too.
Bluesky at least has really robust blocking features. Using them really reduces the toxicity that bubbles into your feed.
I think guys like Singal don't really like Bluesky because their engagement model just doesn't work as well there as it does on twitter. That faintly snarky, passive-aggressive, often concern-trollish, kind of rage-baiting for attention, both negative and positive, kind of tone.
I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to work as well, exactly. Maybe it's the block features. Maybe it's the feeds. Maybe its the user demographics that resulted from the self-selected twitter exodus.
I think it's a combination of all those factors - but keep in mind, one reason you see some of these people write polemics against Bluesky is because they just don't know how to get attention there.
Most users would probably rather block than respond to the bait - that practice got baked into the early bluesky culture. So the only ones left to take the bait are the unhinged, death-threatening, types.
Fedi is a lot better if you want nerd stuff specifically, running instances attracts a lot of hackers who're geared toward it. The big instances are pretty much the same shlock you get on Twitter/Bluesky but there's a lot of cool people in the margins (tip: look for instances that aren't running Mastodon).
Worse yet, people get so blinded that they lose the plot entirely... I asked someone about the accounting of a Palestinian fund raiser they were promoting.
They got very defensive so I looked into it, and it was a scam. I pointed this out to the poster to let them know, and they wrote a snide response which got their followers to brigade me.
You obviously get more of the people with more 'popular' political opinions in the Trending feed but that's not the default and you don't have to follow that if you can find enough good people or hashtags to follow.