What happens when two obscure tools built for privacy become targets just because they made a social network’s life harder? Nitter and XCancel—tiny projects that scrape and rehost tweets, or bulk-cancel follows—got the same cease-and-desist treatment this week. Not from some shadowy state actor, but from the company that built one of the internet’s most widely used communication platforms. That’s not just legal pressure; it’s a signal that even the smallest pieces of plumbing can draw attention when they touch a nerve. Then again, maybe it’s no surprise. One of those projects, Nitter, was just archived by its owner this week with a blunt note: “This repository is now read-only.” Goodbye, I guess? Or maybe it’s the beginning of something quieter—something that keeps running long after the official version shuts down. Technical Overview The first thing to understand about legal defense funds is how money actually moves through them. When you donate, the funds don’t just sit in a b...