GoDaddy Shuts Down Web Hosting for Pro-Life Organization's Abortion Whistleblowing Site

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers have one thing in common: a passion for snitching

When Texas' restrictive new abortion law took effect last week, Texas Right to Life had already launched an anonymous abortion tip line called ProLifeWhistleblower.com, which asked people to submit reports revealing information about people who are facilitating abortions.

This was made possible by the new law's strange mechanism that allows any person, even one outside the state, to sue any other person who either performs an illegal abortion or knowingly aids and abets an illegal abortion (including paying for it). The law defines illegal abortions as those performed past the point at which fetal heartbeat can be detected, around six weeks into pregnancy. ("Fetal heartbeat" is a somewhat fraught term, notes Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown, since it "refer[s] to any embryonic cardiac activity—an electrical pulse that mimics a heartbeat even before an embryo has a heart—and can generally be detected about two weeks after pregnancy registers on a typical home test.")

The law essentially deputizes abortion vigilantes to monitor the activities of other people and sue them for violating the law. If successful, snitches can be rewarded $10,000 in damages. This is all done "in an effort to frustrate constitutional challenges," writes Reason's Jacob Sullum. It has predictably earned the ire of the pro-choice movement and its media boosters. "Here's How You Can Help Shut Down the Vile Website for Snitching on People Who Get Abortions in Texas," reads one Gizmodo headline from last Wednesday. That story suggests that angry pro-choicers contact the site's web hosting provider, GoDaddy, and allege that the website is violating the company's terms of service, which do not allow users to

collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content…or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.

Gizmodo also notes that readers could file abuse reports with the hosting platform, bluntly declaring that "it looks like our best line of defense is filing those reports until the company can't take it anymore." Meanwhile, TikTok users have taken to creating videos that show each other how to flood the site with fake tips. GoDaddy seemingly either buckled under the pressure and/or came to the decision that the TOS violations were indeed too major to allow, giving Texas Right to Life notice that it would need to migrate elsewhere within 24 hours. (Texas Right to Life has not responded to Reason's request for comment.)

The company Epik then agreed to host the site. But before long, Epik's general counsel informed The Verge that the whistleblowing site's anonymous tipline ran afoul of the company's terms of service, too. Now, the ProLifeWhistleblower.com url redirects to Texas Right to Life's homepage, seemingly hobbled by the trials and tribulations of finding suitable web hosting.

Pro-choicers and pro-lifers appear to have one thing in common: a passion for snitching on each other.

Comments

[buckleup]

Unmentioned was the game developer CEO forced to resign over his opinion. Sickening but this is not going to end well for anyone. The left is scorched earth.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Quit whining and accept your fate as a culture war casualty, you bigoted rube.

Or keep whining and give your betters a good laugh.

[Vulgar Madman]

Dumb nazi asshole is still dumb I see.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You get to whine about this all you like, clinger, but you will continue to comply with the preferences of your betters.

Getting stomped in the culture war has consequences.

Especially for disaffected, anti-social, on-the-spectrum, right-wing misfits.

[Patriotic Guy]

When Americans round you up and execute you for your treason, remember that you had a chance to abandon your Marxism.

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[Dee Nishikawa]

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[Patriotic Guy]

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The left has left no more room to allow their continued existence.

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[Patriotic Guy]

Companies like GoDaddy must be punished. A good move is to start organizing to file thousands of lawsuits against them. Democrats love lawfare. Time to use it against them.

[Brason Tay]

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[Rob Misek]

By not standing up for your inalienable rights and those of others, for any of your fucked up reasons, you empower these shitstains to trample the rights you do give a shit about, and gloat.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Remember this? Few do. I do.

Gab, the Social Media Site for the Alt-Right, Gets Deplatformed

Gab is also throwing a tantrum regarding its loss of access to technology services that power the site. The registrar GoDaddy threatened to revoke the site’s domain name (making it difficult to get to Gab by typing in its URL, “gab.ai”). Elsewhere, PayPal and Stripe stopped processing payments made to support the site’s upkeep. Gab was also kicked off of its hosting service, making it impossible to get to the site even with its domain name. By last night, Gab was claiming that it was “under attack” because technology providers decided not to support a digital meeting place favored by and catering to racists.

Yeah, who’s “throwing a tantrum, now”? WHO’S THROWING A TANTRUM NOW?!!

[Mickey Rat]

I wonder how many databases GoDaddy and Epix host are collecting information on people that do not have Express written consent from every person?

[rreally]

Yeah, the personally identifiable information prohibition in the terms is obviously not enforced in the vast majority of cases.

[diWhite Knightoxide]

BOTH SIDES

Just like ex-slave Harriet Tubman and ex-Condedrate Jesse James each had a disdain for other’s private propert rights

[JesseAz]

I mean… he wasn’t even against corporations forcing morality on their clients in a collusive manner. Since when is reason against free markets? Oh. Nm.

[The Encogitationer]

And during the time of both of them, abortion was not outlawed as an act of murder. At most, it was outlawed as something like “offending public morality” and certainly wasn’t regarded as a life sentence or capital offense.

[Dee Nishikawa]

And during the time of both of them, abortion was not outlawed as an act of murder.

First of all, that isn’t what “outlaw” means, you ignorant fucking moron. Second of all, Harriet Tubman lived from 1822 to 1913. Jesse James lived from 1847 to 1882.

During the 1860s a number of states passed anti-abortion laws. Most of these laws were ambiguous and difficult to enforce. After 1860 stronger anti-abortion laws were passed and these laws were more vigorously enforced. As a result, many women began to utilize illegal underground abortion services.

You historically illiterate fucking moron.

[The Encogitationer]

Still wasn’t considered as murder. I don’t recall reading of any women in that time frame swinging from gallows or lined up at a firing squad for having abortions.

Then, as now, anti-abortionists don’t believe in their own bullshit.

Is that The End of History, Nishikawa? You’re certainly ranting like you’re The Last Man.

[Dillinger]

>>writes Reason’s Jacob Sullum

citing Strazele is likely bad idea.

[mad.casual]

Her citation is of ENB is just abject bullshit. Even if she had cited Billy Graham for his medical expertise, that would’ve at least had the honesty of letting abortion activists use their own words to define their position rather than helping their enemies do it for them.

I’m of the mind that it would be hilarious if someone punched both of them in the face so that we could explain that he didn’t punch them, they just detected an electrical impulse in his arm two weeks early.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

It’s like when Bailey links to himself. It the reason I stopped reading him

[Social Justice is neither]

No you marxist cunt (oops, sorry meant left libertarian but what’s the difference) they chose to either buckle to a violent mob or joined in with them. There is a reason Americans see the media as the enemy and you’re a prime example.

[Vulgar Madman]

They don’t think they’ll have to pay a price.

[Patriotic Guy]

I imagine a time when at least one of our beloved progtards here end up being literally torn apart by a gang of antifa thugs who are out of control. All the while screaming how they are with them.

[Jerryskids]

I’m not sure what they think they are accomplishing by getting each other de-platformed since being de-platformed is something a private company is allowed to do to any body at any time and therefore is not any sort of punishment or hardship. It’s not like getting somebody de-platformed is in any way hurting them.

[Arn1]

Being de-platformed from a web hosting service or a registar is not that big of a deal for a simple web page (there is a ton of service like that, in every country of the world), but being de-platformed from the major social-networks or payment systems can be very detrimental for your visibility or your finance because there is so little of them.

[The Encogitationer]

So informing a Web host of violation of it’s Terms Of Service somehow equals doxxing of private data of women who plan or have abortions or those who assist them?

Liz jumped the shark on “Both Sides” here. No comparison.

[mad.casual]

You didn’t read the article. They didn’t say they informed of TOS violations they insisted the TOS violations went too far. Either the TOS apply as written or they don’t. To insist that some act violates the TOS just enough while others violate too far is a violation of equal protection.

[mad.casual]

And this is assuming good faith that the article actually refutes.

Government thumbing the scales on one side abhorent but thumbing the other side is OK. Both sides!

[The Encogitationer]

One can certainly fault Web services for not upholding Terms Of Service in an even-handed manner and it may even be a legitimate tort claim against the service.

However, equal protection, as enumerated and upheld in the Reconstructionist 14th Amendment, is a concept that applies only to government. Specifically, it made the rights enumerated in The Bill of Rights restrict both Federal and State power and apply equally to all persons born or naturalized in the U. S. (Emphasis added for this topic in particular.)

Thus, the concept of equal protection doesn’t apply against Terms Of Service of privately-owned Web services, any more than 1st Amendment rights do.

[mad.casual]

However, equal protection, as enumerated and upheld in the Reconstructionist 14th Amendment, is a concept that applies only to government.

So if GoDaddy decided to refused to host pages/content created by black people or women there would be no problem?

Again, government thumbing one side of the scales is wrong but when they thumb the other guy’s side harder than mine it’s OK. Both sides!

[Dee Nishikawa]

But that’s different because darkies and front-bum-having-persons with the correct political opinions are protected classes while honkies and front-bum-having-persons with the incorrect political opinions are not. See, government forcing private businesses to treat some people differently from others is perfectly in keeping with equal protection.

[The Encogitationer]

If a government were to ban people from the Internet, based upon heritage, gender, nationality, age, or other immutable traits, or even politics, religion, or other viewpoints, then that is a violation of equal protection before the law.

If a strictly private business, not receiving government subsidies or government contracts, were to refuse to host a Web site on such grounds, that not an issue of equal protection, but of private discrimination, and the libertarian response could and/or should be to boycott or ostracize or bad-mouth such a business.

And, again, if there is a Term Of Service issue, then it may be a tort claim.

But at some point, there is a distinction between what is private and what is government and not acknowledging that muddies the issue.

[Brian]

It was called StopMommy!com

[mad.casual]

“Fetal heartbeat” is a somewhat fraught term, notes Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, since it “refer[s] to any embryonic cardiac activity—an electrical pulse that mimics a heartbeat

What the fuck is this bullshit? Full-on, outright, science-denying lies for not other reason than to fear monger. It’s fucking, no-shit medical science. Your fucking opponents put it at six weeks, why would you be nudging it up unless to fear monger? They put it at six weeks because that’s when it’s detectible by ultrasound, equipment completely insensitive to electrical impulses. You complete fucking asshats.

rreally posited in the SB 8 article that artificial wombs would solve the abortion problem. I disagreed. As proof, we now have “libertarian” “women” like ENB abjectly making shit up to scare people into taking their side.

Get fucked with a rusty cheesegrater ENB. Get forced at the point of a gun to clean up ENB’s rusty cheesegrater mess after spreading this bullshit around Liz Wolfe.

[mad.casual]

“These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart.” It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Ultrasound a potato. Then, hook it up to a current far in excess of what you’ll find in the human body and, while still hooked up, do another ultrasound on the same potato. Know what you’ll see? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why? Because an ultrasound is insensitive to electrical currents.

It doesn’t detect all the comparatively massive electrical currents running through the muscles of the mother’s abdominal wall, bladder, cervix, uterus, or intestines. It detects the differential density and compression and decompression of tissue. The idea that an ultrasound machine is detecting electrical impulses revisionist history, undefining physics back over a century to Pierre Curie.

I mean, fuck, you might as well be arguing that sonar works by detecting Tesla’s electrical rays.

[Mickey Rat]

If artificial wombs were a solution, then the the pro-aborts would not be against “born alive” laws. The point of most abortions is not to end a pregnancy, the objective is a dead child.

[The Encogitationer]

The Vatican would most likely be against transoptions (the transplant of embryos) as being “unnatural,” just as they argle-bargled and bitched and moaned about In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) as “unnatural,” even though in the end, they said they didn’t condemn the parents who did it or the children born by this means (at least no more than they condemn natural-born Original Sinners.) Is there a Latin term for loving the sound of one’s own voice?

[rreally]

You perhaps give me too much credit for trying to “solve” irreconcilable political debates.

My claim was that one side of the debate would not oppose an incremental (but not complete) solution to the problem as they see it (survival and development of fetuses, removed from the womb). Which is reason to believe such a change is forthcoming and won’t be blocked politically by that side.

What you’re talking about here is the tactics of the *other* side, which I suppose shouldn’t be underestimated in its absolutism.

Maybe they’ll protest outside the building with the vats for being a waste of electricity, since those aren’t human lives in their view? And something something carbon emissions?

[Rob Misek]

What we’re seeing is private interests working in conjunction with the state to circumvent our inalienable rights.

You who advocate for private market interests to supersede and ignore our inalienable rights are the problem.

[Rob Misek]

It’s the responsibility of the elected government to protect our inalienable constitutional rights.

They aren’t and they’re abdicating that responsibility by making it the responsibility of private companies, threatening them with the liability of persecution if they don’t comply.

Both are pointing fingers at each other giving us the runaround while our rights are violated.

Those of you who think that this is what the founders imagined are mistakenly advocating the violation of our rights. You are making yourselves part of a serious problem.

[eyeroller]

“Terms of service” is a great concept. Nobody complies with your terms of service, but you get to decide when to enforce it.