Nitter.net has disappeared

[crotchfire]

someone filed a complaint to Njalla about unconsensual nudity being hosted on nitter.net, with a link that actually came from another instance.

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1150#issuecomment-18...

Extremely not-encouraging.

I didn't think much of it when I got an email with the subject "Njalla: New Message", and the body just being a link, while traveling.

This is not what I would call professional behavior by Njalla. Apparently everything they send you, including "hey try our new iOS app in the app store!", comes in the form of "Njalla: New Message <hyperlink>". So you have to click-login-read every one of those "new app in the app store!" spams in order to not miss the "hey we might suspend your domain" messages. And of course you can't write spam filtering rules for any of this since it's all forced through a browser flow instead of your mail client. Great.

And this login-to-read-the-link is with the credentials that control transfers of your domain -- heaven forbid you might not want to keep those on every machine from which you read email...

[cedws]

Wow, I don't think I'll be doing business with Njalla then.

I've always wanted to own my domain anonymously and considered moving it to Njalla, but the idea that they could evaporate and I'd lose control of my domain forever put me off. Now I have another reason.

[DoItToMe81]

Njalla is, sadly, garbage. It is a disgrace to the legacy of The Pirate Bay. I've heard horror stories of domains being stolen, without possibility of transfer, over fake reports.

[Aeolun]

This is no different from Amazon though. All their emails, including the “we wont refund you if you don’t respond” ones come with exactly the same “about your order” subject.

[crotchfire]

nitter.net is unavailable because Njalla (domain vendor) suspended my account. I'm waiting for them to respond.

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1150#issuecomment-18...

That is extremely disturbing. Njalla is the owner-of-record (i.e. nominee) for all domains registered through them, rather than merely the registrar. If they run off with your domain you have significantly fewer options for dealing with it than with any other registrar.

I expected better than "shoot first ask questions later" from them. At least shoot while asking the questions; the owner should've had an explanation for the suspension waiting in their inbox.

[monero-xmr]

Njalla is a misunderstood company. You can buy domains and VPCs with monero over VPN / Tor and be totally anonymous. However they will immediately roll over and give everything away to LEO. If you are conducting activity and a valid legal request comes to end that activity, they will. It is on you, the customer, the ensure you are operating privately and not conducting activity in a way that attracts valid legal requests.

Nitter should have anticipated this and planned accordingly. The law is the law. Njalla is a wonderful service but they are not outlaws. They are structured in such a way to make it more difficult to stop their customers, and they hold less data about them. But they operate within the law.

If you use their service and don’t take the adequate steps to protect your privacy, they will give away your data in accordance with the laws of the domicile they operate under.

[sodality2]

Wow, really surprising that Njal.la is the registrar and suspended zedeus, given they advertise themselves as resilient to government requests (not as trigger-happy when it comes to legal threats as other hosters). Their about page says:

> The idea behind Njalla is to make sure that your visibility to the public is minimised if you need it to be. We're not going to give your customer data out easily. However, we will help if there are legal merits to any formal government requests to our system. If you use our service in a way that affects anyones health or safety, we reserve the right to suspend your service.

Does this mean Twitter gave a very valid legal threat? Or worse, is there some Twitter content that is being mirrored that is unsavory and triggered an immediate suspension from Njalla? This is unfortunately very common for Nitter in particular [0] [1].

[0]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/DMCA-templates [1]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/482

[nadermx]

What's interesting about this is when you use Njalla you give your domain to them. So it seems in worse case they could just keep the domain with no legal recourse too? Given from my understanding nitter is simply a proxy service too this makes it odd.

[Aeolun]

> Or worse, is there some Twitter content that is being mirrored that is unsavory and triggered an immediate suspension from Njalla?

Since it mirrors all twitter content that seems almost a given.

[KomoD]

> given they advertise themselves as resilient to government requests (not as trigger-happy when it comes to legal threats as other hosters)

That does not mean they're ok with illegal things... such as CSAM which was the case here. They're not a bullet proof registrar, they're meant to be private, they're not even a registrar

[byyll]

They are clearly not resilient. They serve no purpose to the market.

[DannyPage]

A list of Nitter mirrors and their uptime status for those looking for alternatives: https://status.d420.de/

[trog]

Worth noting this page also includes which Nitter instances support RSS.

I've replaced 99 percent of my Twitter use with RSS now and oh my is it a more pleasant experience.

[al_borland]

>add 185.246.188.57 nitter.net to your hosts file

Good workaround, but not so helpful for iOS.

[cozzyd]

You just need a DNS server that does that, I guess?

[im3w1l]

So I was thinking it would be kind of nice if there was a way to write a url like

https://nitter.net(c/o 185.246.188.57)/something/other

I guess links would still be broken though. Maybe a browser feature for a hosts file?

[1over137]

Is that yet another thing the mothership won’t let you do with an iPhone?

[fdsfasfa]

This so called Njalla's website screams scam. No contacts, no people. Just a mention of some 1337 LLC in the depths of pages and a lot of attention to "what Njalla means ... From the dictionary ... /ˈɲalla/ (Sami)" on every page as if someone gives a shit. And, of course, it's overpriced, too. No wonder, the account has been suspended.

[number6]

You should check their history. They are deeply connected with pirate bay

[orbital-decay]

That's how a typical bulletproof service looks like.

[KomoD]

"Felt a bit shitty to have my domain taken down over something I'm not responsible for. The content is only available through Nitter because Twitter makes it available."

He totally is responsible, the argument "i only serve it because twitter serves it" is bad in my opinion, he's still serving it, just because Twitter does it too doesn't absolve him of all responsibility

[xigoi]

If someone views child porn using Mozilla Firefox, is Mozilla responsible for it?

[jevoten]

Tangential, but Firefox's error message "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site. An error occurred during a connection to nitter.net." is so user-friendly it is useless.

Is the certificate invalid? Is the DNS record missing? Was the IP address found, but is returning malformed answers? Is it returning nothing at all? Can I even reach any DNS servers, or is my connection to the internet itself dead?

The browser isn't telling, not even behind a "show details" button. There's only "trouble" and "an error", and some patronizing anthropomorphism with the "Hmm."

[icehawk]

- Is the certificate invalid?

- Was the IP address found, but is returning malformed answers?

- Is it returning nothing at all?

Firefox returns "Your connection is not secure" for the first, and the raw data from the HTTP request for the others. (Or Secure Connection Failed for the second if you try to use HTTPS)

"We’re having trouble finding that site." is only ever given if the browser tries to do a DNS lookup and does not get an answer.

[kortilla]

“Finding” is dns. The rest of those scenarios mention connection issues

[doaefjalneg]

njal.la restored nitter.net, and replied with their reasons: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1150#issuecomment-18...

tbh I can totally understand why they acted this way.

[Aeolun]

How would you know any nudity on twitter was unconsensual? How would you prove it to the service you are asking to block it? Do they just assume it is if anything nude shows up?

[kmeisthax]

You can know it's nonconsensual if, say, the subject of the photo complains about it. Presumably they're the ones sending the notice to Njalla, who then sent the complaint on to the wrong subscriber, and thus here we are.

[CamelCaseName]

Could this be Twitter paying or forcing Njalla to shut down Nitter?

[anileated]

How to kill any Twitter clone:

1. Twitter posts something infringing and waits for it to sync to the clone.

2. Twitter removes the infringing post.

3. Copyright owner DMCAs the clone. Some little bird tells it about the infringing post.

4. After the clone does nothing, copyright owner DMCAs its infrastructure providers (ISP, DNS), who promptly kill the clone.

Given sufficiently big copyright owner (Warner Bros, etc.), providers will probably ban clone’s billing account permanently for good measure.

To avoid this scenario, all the clone needs to do is be a good citizen and respect DMCA takedown notices.

[canadiantim]

So what are the alternatives to Njalla?

[byyll]

IncogNet if you want a similar "we own it for you and let you manage it" service.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Tor hidden service.

[byyll]

I hope that's the last straw needed to switch away from this unprofessional registrar run from a basement.