Nitter is over - It's been a fun ride

tl;dr - Twitter blocked the last known way to access their network without a user account.

Background

Over the last 2 years nitter.cz proxied over 10 Billion requests (>10,000,000,000) to Twitter, shielding you from tracking and ads, while providing a fast user interface. Nitter might be dead, but at the NoLog.cz collective we are still dedicated to providing the public with many more tools and services.

We never track our users, show ads or sell any data to any third party. Our infrastructure runs on our own bare-metal servers, and we are not dependent on any cloud provider. That doesn't mean it's free. Running our servers costs us ~600€/month, and we are only able to pay for it thanks to users who are pitching in.

Why is Nitter ending?

Over the last years, the the main developer of Nitter, Zed, worked really hard to keep the project going. But Twitter worked just as hard on closing their network down and limiting any access they can't monetize.

Most Nitter servers were using a technique of generating loads of temporary tokens that were used for accessing the content, but that path is now blocked as well.

What to do now?

Don't trust corporations, especially those where one egomaniac has all the power. Use open-source and community driven solutions if you can (like Mastodon).

There might be a way to spin up a personal Nitter instance with your own account to keep the interface you are used to, but there is no guarantee this will work long-term. Unfortunately regular accounts can only support a small group of users, so running a public instance this way is not feasible.