GoDaddy, DigitalOcean Stop Web Hosting for Anti-Abortion Whistleblower Website

First GoDaddy and later on DigitalOcean have stopped providing web hosting services to the anti-abortion group’s whistleblower website in Texas, prolifewhistleblower.com. On Friday, GoDaddy informed the website owners to go find a new web hosting provider as the website content violated GoDaddy’s terms of service. After migrating to DigitalOcean, DigitalOcean seems to have done the same.

The Texas Heartbeat Act took effect last Wednesday. It bans abortions after it is possible to detect a ‘fetal heartbeat.’ The website, prolifewhistleblower.com, was created this week after this new abortion law went into effect.

The legislation prevents women from getting abortions six weeks after conception and even encourages Texans to notify clinics that unlawfully conduct abortions by offering a $10,000 incentive to those who report them.

After Gizmodo revealed that Texas Right to Life’s website, prolifewhistleblower.com, seemed to breach a GoDaddy web hosting user rule, GoDaddy took action. DigitalOcean seems to have done the same after the website was transferred to their systems and network. We’re not sure who’ll be hosting the website once you read this article. At the moment of writing it was live again while the hosting environment referred to Sucuri.

Web Hosting Terms of Service

GoDaddys terms of service stated 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.’

GoDaddy’s terms of service also mentioned that clients cannot use the web hosting platform in a way 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.’

Activists failed to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn Texas’ prohibition on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The court rejected the groups’ emergency appeal on Wednesday, claiming that the law will make abortion difficult for at least 85 percent of Texas women who desire it.