One of the most well-known AIM revivals is defunct.

(SpaceHey does not like images in blogs - please check the source for a link to all of the images, soz ;_;)

Source:

https://wink.messenger.com/t/nina-escargot-from-the-inside/26336

Please check this source out as it contains not only all of the evidence for this, but also additional information on other NINA controversies (including allegations that the owner, Tony, was running a Ponzi scheme).

tl;dr

NINA, one of the most well-known revivals for AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ is effectively defunct, and their core servers will be going down potentially as early as the 21st of September.

What is NINA?

For those who do not know, NINA (formerly hosted at nina.chat) was a service that (by most accounts) had succeeded in reviving AOL Instant Messenger, one of the most well known instant messaging platforms other than Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger). Additionally, they attempted to revive AOL Desktop, ICQ, and even Skype.

So what happened?

As is common with revivals of discontinued services, they were not spared from controversy, the most notable being very recently: a week ago, the Discord server for NINA (and Escargot, the sister project notable for reviving MSN Messenger) went into turmoil after a bad actor had paid their way into staff without any form of background checks.

This bad actor was known for abusing the DMCA system to send false reports, and allegedly had threatened a file hosting service with uploading CSAM. When this was revealed, the acceptance of the bad actor into staff was put into question, and a staff member told users "it's 2025, let's forgive and forget, and people change", leading to likely one of the worst PR nightmares (potentially of this year).

The community (justifiably) crashing out at the staff trying to forgive someone for being in possession of CSAM, which is a crime in a large majority of countries. Eventually, the server started receiving mass reports for CSAM being in the server, which led to the server owner (tonyshowoff) deleting the server in its entirety to prevent mass account bans.

Also...

This would have been the end of it, if Yahoo/AOL's legal counsel hadn't sent them another ceast and desist asking for NINA to cease operations. Turns out, NINA had already received a ceast and desist due to their blatant similar branding (potentially confusing certain users to whether NINA was affiliated with AOL), and Tony had made the brilliant decision of ignoring the first cease and desist. You can guess why the legal counsel got mad.

As a result, NINA were forced to take their website, wiki and forums down indefinitely (you can still see the shutdown message on their main page). Additionally, only the core AIM services are currently running at the moment (all other non-required services are down, including NINA Today/Weather/Stocks), and it is estimated that the core services will be available until (earliest) the 21st of September.

So what now?

Some of the userbase have moved to alternative revivals such as CrossTalk (crosstalk.im) or Phoenix (iwarg.ddns.net). Escargot, NINA's sister project, will continue to operate.