A Texas law recently passed allows private citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, created a website to gather anonymous information on any alleged violations. It tried, or at least it tried. It has not been offered by any company.
The fate of prolifewhistleblower.com remains uncertain, and its absence from the internet does not negate the Texas law or its impacts. However, internet infrastructure giants have been blurring the lines about who they are willing to accept as customers in recent years. This was illustrated by Parler's saga on far-right social media site. In contrast, prolifewhistleblower.com offers a rare example of consensus about what constitutes acceptable behavior online.
Although the site made a brief appearance online, it launched last Wednesday. However, it had a slow start. In an effort to overwhelm the system, a small army from Reddit and TikTok users attempted to flood the reporting mechanism with false claims. GoDaddy, a web hosting company, had ended its relationship with the site on Saturday for violating its terms of service. This explicitly prohibited the collection of identifying information without the consent of third parties.
Whitney Merrill, a former Federal Trade Commission attorney and privacy and data protection lawyer, says that services in certain cases should notify users and allow them to cure. GoDaddy alerted the site owner that their actions were in violation of the terms. This is not a legal requirement. It's just good business practice.
Texas Right to Life registered the site with Epik, a notorious service provider known for providing safe haven to contentious platforms such as Parler and Gab. But Epik never offered to host prolifewhistleblower.com content, only a way to register the site's domain. On Saturday evening, prolifewhistleblower.com simply started redirecting to the Texas Right to Life homepage rather than reviving its previous incarnation as a tip submission system.
Epik released a statement Saturday saying that he had spoken to the owner of the domain and agreed to stop the collection of user submissions. In other words, Epik will act as prolifewhistleblower.coms registrar so long as it's only redirecting to the group's main site. Epik will remove its registration if it continues to collect third-party data.
Kim Schwartz, spokesperson for Texas Right to Life, offers a different perspective. Prolifewhistleblower.com is currently forwarding to TexasRightToLife.com because we're establishing extra security protocols to protect our users before we put it back up," she said in a statement Monday evening. The site has found a new host but she did not specify which company because of security concerns.
However, the URL redirected to Texas Right to Life's homepage as of Wednesday afternoon. It seems unlikely that this site will be able to comply with the basic protections of third-party data collection, given its entire purpose is to gather information about individuals who may have assisted in Texas abortions.
This situation recalls past conflicts where internet infrastructure providers withdrew hosting, DDoS protection or support for extremist websites, causing them either to go offline permanently, or until they find new providers. Cloudflare has, for instance, had to make difficult decisions about how it can remain neutral, protect speech rights, and take action in extreme situations. In 2017, the company stopped supporting white supremacist or other controversial platforms such as 8chan.
