Software:Nitter

From HandWiki
Nitter
A red outline of the capital letter N
Typical microblog display page for a Nitter instance, showing Twitter user with tweets
Developer(s)Zedeus (and contributors)
Initial release19 June 2019;
6 years ago (2019-06-19)
Stable release
2024.01.12-52db03b / 12 January 2024;
2 years ago (2024-01-12)
Repositorygithub.com/zedeus/nitter
Written inNim, SCSS, Python, CSS, JavaScript
Operating systemUnix-like
PlatformWeb
LicenseAGPLv3+[1]
Website{{{1}}}
As of29 October 2023; 2 years ago (2023-10-29)

Nitter is a free and open source alternative frontend for Twitter, focusing on privacy and performance.[2][3] Nitter is designed to allow access to Twitter without tracking, advertisements, or the need for an account. It only supports browsing, and cannot be used to sign in or interact with the Twitter community. Users can view user profiles, replies, media, and individual Tweets alongside their comments and Quote Tweets. Nitter also allows for searching by keywords, hashtags, usernames, locations, media and dates and supports the same formatting as Twitter's native advanced search function.

Features

The user interface is designed to be minimalist and resemble the classic Twitter desktop layout.[3][4] Since users cannot log in to Twitter through Nitter, Nitter has no notifications, no home feed, and no ability to tweet. By default, Nitter has no infinite scroll, although an experimental feature allows for the usage of infinite scroll.[5] It has no ads or tracking, and the timeline is in chronological order.[4] Nitter relied on a glitch that allowed creating a large amount of "guest accounts" using proxy servers in order to fetch content.[6] It now relies on using registered account tokens to access the site, as Twitter has removed the ability to create guest accounts, and heavily restricts access to logged-out users.

In addition to the official web instance, there are unofficial public web instances, as well as community-contributed mobile apps and browser extensions.[7][5]

Nitter is funded by donations as well as a grant from NLnet's NGI fund.[8]

Discontinuation

Nitter was officially discontinued in February 2024. The developer had announced the project was "dead" after Twitter removed the guest account feature, on which Nitter relied, in January 2024.[6] Some instances had previously stopped working some months before due to changes to the Twitter API.[9] The developer stated instances could be self-hosted by having users use their own account, at the risk of the account being banned.[10]

Revival

On 6 February 2025, Zedeus announced on GitHub Discussions that development on the project would be resuming.[11] Instances can no longer generate guest accounts as Twitter has removed the feature, and the project now requires the usage of registered accounts to access Twitter.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Alternative Twitter front-end". June 30, 2019. https://github.com/zedeus/nitter#license. 
  2. ↑ "About" (in en). https://nitter.net/about. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Get 'Old Twitter' back, or something like it, with these alternative approaches" (in en). 3 June 2020. https://technology.inquirer.net/100276/get-old-twitter-back-or-something-like-it-with-these-alternative-approaches. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Maxwell, Tom. "Nitter is a new front-end for Twitter that helps hide you from advertisers" (in en). https://www.inputmag.com/tech/nitter-is-a-new-front-end-for-twitter-that-helps-hide-you-from-advertisers. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Pot, Justin (Feb 6, 2023). "This Tool Makes Twitter More Bearable to Read" (in en). https://www.wired.com/story/nitter-twitter-remove-ads-for-you-promoted-tweets/. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Brodkin, Jon (2024-02-15). "Twitter front-end Nitter dies as Musk wins war against third-party services" (in en-us). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/twitter-front-end-nitter-dies-as-musk-wins-war-against-third-party-services/. 
  7. ↑ Brinkmann, Martin (16 March 2022). "LibRedirect loads privacy-friendly sites automatically when you load YouTube, Search, TikTok and other sites" (in en-US). https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/16/libredirect-loads-privacy-friendly-sites-automatically-when-you-load-youtube-search-tiktok-and-other-sites. 
  8. ↑ "NLnet; Nitter". https://nlnet.nl/project/Nitter/. 
  9. ↑ Sarabia, Chema (2024-02-19). "You can no longer access Twitter without an account: Elon Musk has won" (in en-US). https://en.softonic.com/articles/you-can-no-longer-access-twitter-without-an-account-elon-musk-has-won. 
  10. ↑ "nitter.net certificate expired on 15:08:30 GMT · Issue #1155 · zedeus/nitter" (in en). https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1155. 
  11. ↑ "nitter.net is back · zedeus nitter · Discussion #1212" (in en). https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/discussions/1212. 



Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Software:Nitter&oldid=4137282"