Probably the first time I've read a headline of some kind where good news followed something like "Due to legal advice". I hope the best for any service using Nitter, because the split between X and Bluesky is becoming another red vs. blue making life difficult for everyone else.
Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
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Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#12The software project itself is probably fine, but the legal risk is always going to be with the person that hosts it with the intention of facilitating the unauthorized access of Twitter's website. Seems like that could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Those people should seek their own legal advice.
Except this is settled case law. LinkedIn tried and lost against scrapers.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#13The software project itself is probably fine, but the legal risk is always going to be with the person that hosts it with the intention of facilitating the unauthorized access of Twitter's website. Seems like that could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Those people should seek their own legal advice.
Except this is settled case law. LinkedIn tried and lost against scrapers.
I think that this is different because Nitter uses real X accounts for scraping, rather than publicly available data.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#14The software project itself is probably fine, but the legal risk is always going to be with the person that hosts it with the intention of facilitating the unauthorized access of Twitter's website. Seems like that could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Those people should seek their own legal advice.
Host the infra in countries unfriendly to the US and its legal framework apparatus. Continually package the archive as torrents for distribution globally. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567595
X already knows who the maintainer is and could easily go after him.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#15I once consulted a lawyer when a large company contacted me. His response was - they've got a team of lawyers on payroll whose job it is to make you run out of money...
It would be unfortunate for xAI, which abused the TOS of OpenAI for distilling via user accounts, to get a ruling that forbids scraping via user accounts.
The entire business model of the AI industry, who resell and launder the scraped data, would collapse.
Nitter just makes it visible to a human and has anti-scraper measures necessitated by the thieves like xAI.
Additionally, a GoFundMe would reach astronomical proportions given how unpopular Musk is.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#16The software project itself is probably fine, but the legal risk is always going to be with the person that hosts it with the intention of facilitating the unauthorized access of Twitter's website. Seems like that could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Those people should seek their own legal advice.
Except this is settled case law. LinkedIn tried and lost against scrapers.
That was a case of scraping explicitly public data that was already available to the general public without any extra effort.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#17When I got my first cease and desist my lawyer basically asked me if this is a hill you are willing to die on (i.e. spend enormous amounts of time and money on). I with them luck. I suspect a Go Fund Me announcement coming soon.
You're thinking of pre-LLM times. Nowadays GPT-6 can probably advise them better than all the worlds law firms combined. And probably win too, considering the incompetence (and tech illiteracy) of human lawyers.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#18It is sad that Twitter is basically a private closed gate monopoly that people beg to use instead of developing alternatives like RSS
Social media is addictive. RSS is not. Social media is profitable so worth marketing. RSS is not.
Re: Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Host the infra in countries unfriendly to the US and its legal framework apparatus. Continually package the archive as torrents for distribution globally. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567595
X already knows who the maintainer is and could easily go after him.
They will have to prove he’s operating it, and someone else can orchestrate. Anna’s Archive, Z Lib, Archive.today, Tor exit node patterns.
Put a tip jar out, let’s get archiving. “You can just do things.”