GoDaddy Cuts Right to Life Abortion 'Whistleblowing' Website in Texas, But It's Staying Online

GoDaddy Cuts Right to Life Abortion 'Whistleblowing' Website in Texas, But It's Staying Online

In case you haven't heard, Texas now has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help and take advantage of women's abortions after six weeks of pregnancy without the exception of rape or incest. The anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life is encouraging citizens to report on a dedicated "whistleblower" website, promising to "make sure these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions." Is."

On Friday, Texas Right to Life had to find a new home on the web, as hosting provider GoDaddy gave the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website. "We have informed prolifewhistlelower.com that they have 24 hours to switch to another provider for violating our terms of service," a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge.

As of late Friday, it appears that Home:Epic, the provider that helped save controversial sites Gab, social media platform Parlor and Internet hate forum 8chan when other web service providers won't take them, is now serving as the registrar. is in. Also listed for prolifewhistlelower.com. The site is still having some trouble staying online: As of 4AM ET Saturday, we saw HTTP 503 error codes when trying to access it. According to Ars Technica, it previously attempted to use Digital Ocean as a hosting provider, but it may have also missed that provider's rules and is no longer hosted there.

GoDaddy told The Verge that the whistleblower site violated "several provisions" of its terms of service, including section 5.2, which reads:

You collect or harvest (or collect) any non-public or personally identifiable information about any User Content (as defined below) or about any other user or any other person or entity without their prior written consent. collect). Will not allow anyone else to collect or cut).

According to the NYT, the website of the anti-abortion group has been under siege for days now, with angry protesters flooding it with fake tips—including at least one fake claim that Texas Governor Greg Abbott himself violated the law. Was. As Motherboard reported yesterday, an activist on TikTok also created a script that can automatically feed fake reports into the website's tipbox. He told the NYT that the automated tool he built had received more than 15,000 clicks.

But on Wednesday, Gizmodo's Shoshana Wodinsky suggested activists another way to protest: by whistling over Texas Right to Life, by complaining to GoDaddy about what it was doing. It seems to have happened.

This isn't the first time web hosting providers, or even GoDaddy in particular, have taken on this role: Gab.com had to find a new home in October 2018 and GoDaddy took on white nationalist Richard Spencer's Altright in May. Took over the .com. swept aside. Neo-Nazi news site Daily Stormer was similarly given 24 hours by GoDaddy in August 2017 to find a new home, and turned to the dark web instead. However, Gab was able to make a comeback, and apparently Texas Right to Life has avoided being removed at all.