On September 3, Twitter was flooded with complaints that prolifewhistleblower.com, a website that collects anonymous tips about people violating the Texas abortion law, did not comply with GoDaddy’s terms of service. Acting quickly, GoDaddy blocked access to the website and gave the domain owners a 24-hour notice period to register under a different provider, according to an NPR report. Prolifewhistleblower.com was launched by anti-abortion organisation Texas Right To Life, soon after the Texas Heartbeat Act came into effect this month. The new legislation makes it illegal for anyone to help a woman get an abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy. The website had a form through which users could anonymously submit information about people violating the law. GoDaddy’s decision to withdraw support for the site contributes to a larger trend of web hosting providers and cloud services foraying into content moderation and removal. A few days ago, news reports revealed that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is considering a more proactive approach to determine what types of content belong on its servers. Such hosting and domain providers have managed to evade attention in the past, but are now entering the spotlight as stewards of the internet. What do GoDaddy's Terms of Service say? In collecting personal data without consent through the anonymous form, prolifewhistleblower.com violated GoDaddy’s terms of service, which state: You will not collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content (as defined below) or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another User or…
