GoDaddy Gives Texas Abortion Website Notice: Find New Host ASAP

The so-called Texas abortion 'whistleblower' website may go dark in the near future if it doesn't find a new host. The website's current host, GoDaddy, has warned Texas Right to Life that it has 24 hours to find a new host before its services are cut off. This won't be the first time GoDaddy has shut down a controversial website for violating its rules.

The highly controversial and regressive Texas abortion law went into effect on September 1. With the law comes the Texas Right to Life group's website where anyone can submit allegations that a woman had an abortion past the state's six-week cutoff mark. The state's new abortion law also allows private citizens to target anyone accused of helping facilitate an abortion.

Because the website allows anonymous tips from anyone, including those who are outside of Texas, activists and social media users have started online campaigns that revolve around flooding the website with fake reports. The idea is that by submitting these tips, those who are responsible for investigating them will struggle to parse through the data for real allegations.

Amid the hacktivism is an outcry directed at GoDaddy, the company that hosts the website. Many have called on the company to cut off its services to Texas Right to Life, a call that has been heard. According to a statement GoDaddy provided to The New York Times, Texas Right to Life has been given 24 hours to find a different host for its website.

GoDaddy says it will cut off the abortion tip website's services due to violating its terms of service. Though this won't take the website down permanently, it may result in the site going dark for a short while, assuming Texas Right to Life isn't able to find a new host before the deadline arrives.