GoDaddy stopped hosting a website used by an anti-abortion group to encourage people to anonymously inform on Texans obtaining or facilitating abortions, following the passage of an aggressive anti-abortion bill in the state.
Hosting was then transferred over to DigitalOcean, which also dropped quickly the company.
After Gizmodo revealed that Texas Right to Life’s website, prolifewhistleblower.com, seemed to breach a GoDaddy web hosting user rule, the hosting company kicked the website off of its platform.
"GoDaddy emailed the Texas Right to Life IT team Thursday evening alleging we violated the terms of service," the group said. "They neglected to specify how."
GoDaddy’s ToS say that website operators may not "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," something the site aimed to do.
They also say that clients cannot use GoDaddy-hosted sites to do anything that "violates the privacy or publicity rights of another User or any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that you owe to another User or any other person or entity."
Hosting site Epik, which has been more open to hosting sites like Gab and 8chan, also said that it would not host the website unless it dropped the form collecting private information about third parties.
While it was online, activists used the form to submit thousands of false abortion reports, as well as graphic pictures of Shrek.
The website currently redirects to the Texas Right to Life homepage, with the group claiming it is looking for another host. It has also used the situation as an opportunity to fundraise.
The Texas Heartbeat Act took effect last Wednesday, following the Supreme Court declining to overturn the ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
Following the decision, President Biden said he was directing the Office of the White House Counsel and his Gender Policy Council to involve the Health and Human Services Department and the Justice Department to evaluate what "legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas' bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties."
He added that the law was “almost un-American” and said it creates a “vigilante system.”
