Comment by ButlerianJihad

There are aspects of copyright and CFAA that could, hypothetically, be brought to bear on this as well.

IANAL, but most of the copyrights are held by the X users, X having sublicensed it. It is unlikely that X users would band together and sue Nitter, and X doesn't really have the standing for takedowns or lawsuits on those grounds.

IIUC, nitter is acting as a proxy-gateway and using authorized user accounts to do it through the API. It's essentially opening up access for unauthenticated, unauthorized persons, to content that they would not otherwise be able to access. Imagine if I established a service that granted authenticated proxy access to Bill Gates' online banking app. Or a service that proxies GitHub by means of a very prominent user account, that has commit access to significant repos in the public supply chain.

I believe that even HN commenters could see the legal flaws in such services; no matter how much they covet Bill Gates' money. nitter and friends are essentially doing the same crimes, on a read-only, low-grade low-stakes sort of way, but the victims are a very high-profile platform plus all their users. We do not appreciate these hijinks.