Se você ainda tem o hábito de abrir links do X (antigo Twitter) para ler um post isolado, sabe como a experiência costuma ser irritante: ou o site pede login, ou carrega um monte de coisas que você não quer ver, ou simplesmente trava. Foi pensando nisso que Zhenyi Tan, desenvolvedor do site And a Dinosaur, criou o Litterbox.

O Litterbox é uma extensão para Safari (iOS, iPadOS e macOS) que abre links do x.com em um popup, permitindo ler aquele post específico sem sair da página em que você está — e sem precisar visitar o X de fato. A ideia, nas palavras do próprio desenvolvedor, é simples: abrir, dar uma olhada e fechar em seguida.

Alguns detalhes de funcionamento que valem a pena destacar:

• A extensão usa a mesma API que o X utiliza para os embeds oficiais do site, então não depende de gambiarras que podem parar de funcionar a qualquer momento.
• Nenhum cookie seu é enviado quando o popup é aberto — ou seja, o Litterbox não usa sua sessão logada no X para exibir o conteúdo.
• Links que podem ser abertos dessa forma ganham uma pequena marcação ao lado (um pontinho), já que nem todo link do x.com pode ser incorporado dessa maneira — perfis de usuário, por exemplo, ficam de fora.

O Litterbox é gratuito na App Store, sem assinaturas, compras no app, anúncios ou rastreamento, e exige o iOS 18/macOS 15 ou superior.

via Daring Fireball

Turn in this setting that will strengthen the security of your X (formerly Twitter) account and prevent hackers from gaining access to it.

Richard Speed (Hacker News 3):

XCancel’s home page now contains some minimal text stating: “On Monday 24th August at 8 PM EST, we received at [sic] letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.”

It says the service has been halted “until further notice.”

[…]

Nitter provided a way for users to read posts on X without requiring an account. There was no JavaScript or ads, a user’s IP could not be tracked, and it was generally a good deal snappier than the official X client, just read-only. It was the service behind platforms such as XCancel.

The only thing surprising about this is how long it took.

Nick Heer:

Companies like X and Meta are very happy to scrape the web at unprecedented scale and without permission, but have zero tolerance for the same to be done to them by, in effect, individual users. That is not because they are protective of the creative works users have contributed to these platforms. It is simply because users are not trusted to use the platforms. X does not permit third-party readers, and neither does Instagram, because their value does not come from us using these services as we wish, but from how they dictate we must.

Previously:

• Old Reddit Now Requires Logging In
• Reddit Pushes Web Visitors to App
• Instagram Shuts Down Basic Display API
• Twitter for Mac Dead Again
• Social Media AI Training
• Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee
• Twitter Now Requires Logging In
• Migrating From Twitter to Mastodon

Update (2026-09-07): There are currently twelve working Nitter instances (Hacker News).

zedeus (Hacker News):

Following legal advice, the Nitter project will continue.

Update (2026-09-16): XCancel (via John Gruber, Hacker News):

Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can’t share more details.

xsukax (via Brent Simmons):

xsukax X RSS Generator fetches publicly accessible X profile HTML, extracts posts and media, stores them locally, and exposes the results as standards-compatible RSS feeds that can be consumed by RSS readers, automation platforms, monitoring systems, and other feed-aware applications.