And yet nitter is still faster with only 47 contributors total. Says more.

... because it is essentially a caching proxy to twitter?

So is twitter.com. Unless they aren't using a CDN lol

I think the advertiser boycott is a major contributor. Advertisements are slow...

X's reduced user base might make X faster than ever.

Some data for me:

Nitter: I get all 8 posts in the thread in 18 requests, 207 kB, 169 kB transferred.

X: I only get the first post, 128 requests, 11.45 MB, 2.11 MB transferred.

No, no it is not.

Twitter requires JS to work though.