Texas has now passed a law making it illegal to assist women in getting abortions after six weeks. In order to make sure that they are held accountable, Texas Right to Life encourages citizens to report lawbreakers at a designated whistleblower site.
Texas Right to Life now appears to have difficulty keeping its home online. GoDaddy, the hosting provider, has given Texas Right to Life 24 hours to locate a new site. We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service, a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge.
GoDaddy did not answer the question whether the group's other domains are affected by this policy, but told The Verge that the site violated several provisions of its Terms of Service, including Section 5.2. This section reads:
Without their explicit written consent, you will not harvest or permit anyone else harvest any User Content (as described below) or any nonpublic or personally identifiable information about any User or other person or entity.
According to NYT, the anti-abortion group website has been under attack for several days. Protesters have been flooding it with fake tips, including one false claim that Greg Abbott, Texas governor, had broken the law. Motherboard reported that TikTok activist even wrote a script to automatically send fake reports to the tipbox. According to him, the automated tools that he had created had been clicked over 15,000 times.
On Wednesday, Gizmodos Shoshana Wolfinsky suggested a different way for activists to protest. She suggested that they blow the whistle on Texas Right to Life by complaining to GoDaddy. This is what appears to have occurred.
This is not the first time that web hosting providers, or even GoDaddy, have played this role. Gab.com needed to find a new home for October 2018. GoDaddy also took down Richard Spencers Altright.com in May 2018, which was run by white nationalist Richard Spencers Altright.com. GoDaddy gave the Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi news website, 24 hours to find a new home. However, it ended up moving to dark web. Gab was able to make his return and the Texas Right to Life may also find a solution.
Update at 4:36 PM ET: Additional context from GoDaddy.
