Texas anti-abortion tip website gets new domain registrar known for hosting extremist content following boot from GoDaddy

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Texas anti-abortion tip website gets new domain registrar known for hosting extremist content following boot from GoDaddy
Protesters against abortion restrictions gathered at the Texas State Capitol on May 21, 2019. Eric Gay/AP
  • Domain provider Epik is now hosting Texas Right to Life's tip-reporting website, Salon reported.
  • Epik also hosts QAnon home base 8chan, Alex Jones' InfoWars, and right-wing sites like Parler and Gab.
  • The news comes after GoDaddy dropped the anti-abortion tipster website last week.
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A website designed to report tips on Texans trying to obtain abortions is up and running again, now hosted by a company that also powers neo-Nazi sites.

Epik - a provider known for hosting QAnon home base 8chan, Alex Jones' conspiracy site InfoWars, and right-wing social media site Parler - is now hosting ProLifeWhistleblower.com, a website for anonymous tipsters to send in information about people assisting Texans obtaining abortions.

Salon's Brett Bachman reported the news based on public domain registration data and information in ArsTechnica.

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The tip website, which some critics are calling a "snitch hotline," was created by pro-life group Texas Right to Life following the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Bill last week, which bans most abortions in the state at six weeks after conception. It also incentivizes private citizens to report people who could be enabling abortions, like doctors and ride-share drivers, and allows them to sue those people.

GoDaddy, the well-known domain provider initially hosting the website, said Thursday that Texas Right to Life violated multiple provisions, including one that bars sites that "collect or harvest... non-public or personally identifiable information" without written consent from the subject, according to Salon.

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Following the GoDaddy ban, Kimberlyn Schwartz, Texas Right to Life's spokesperson, said that "we will not be silenced. If anti-Lifers want to take our website down, we'll put it back up."

"No one can keep us from telling the truth," Schwartz wrote in a blog post. "No one can stop us from saving lives. We are not afraid of the mob," she said.

The site was then picked up by Epik, which is known for hosting information deemed too toxic by to be hosted by other websites, including neo-Nazi propaganda.

But at least for now, even Epik is putting some limitations on the whistleblowing site: the company late Saturday told the Daily Beast it had received complaints about the website and has since disabled its anonymous tip submission form.

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