Nitter and XCancel both stop after cease and desist letters, and XCancel names X Corp as the sender

Sources: issue, XCancel notice, discussion, XCancel discussion
Summary: Issue 1442 on zedeus/nitter carries comment 5413651441 with user.login zedeus and author_association OWNER, created 2026-08-25T16:42:56Z, stating that cease and desist letters were received and that all nitter instances should be expected to remain down for the foreseeable future. The xcancel.com front page serves its own notice, which names X Corp as the sender of a letter dated Monday 24 August at 8PM EST, states the service is stopped until further notice, and states that XCancel is seeking legal advice. The GitHub API reports the repository as archived, with 13,548 stars and 943 forks under AGPL-3.0. Neither letter is public. XCancel names X Corp and the nitter owner names no sender, so this entry states no grounds for the letters and does not place both with the same party.
Why it matters: Nitter and XCancel were how tools, archives, and researchers read X without an account, and both are stopped by legal action rather than by a rate limit, so anything depending on either needs a different path and self-hosting now carries the same legal exposure.
Follow-up: Track the legal outcome for either party, and whether a fork continues maintenance.