GoDaddy boots Texas abortion “whistleblower” site for violating privacy rule | Hacker News Reader

GoDaddy boots Texas abortion “whistleblower” site for violating privacy rule

arstechnica.com

51 pointsctoth19 comments

I hope someone is maintaining a list of these companies that do stunts like this in reaction to politics. Because I don’t want to be a customer of theirs ever, whether I agree or disagree with what they support. It shows they value being part of the political culture war over providing a good service to any customer.

Conversely, many of us would appreciate a list of companies who have solid values and aren't afraid to take a stand against oppressive institutions like the Texas government. I'd never use GoDaddy for many reasons, but good on them for not caving to the "free speech at any cost" crowd.

> solid values

You mean values that change over time and along with fashion? That's the opposite of "solid".

Values are supposed to evolve over time. It would be an issue if they went back on this, however. We'll see what happens.

Question: How would you feel about ICANN or root server owners like Verisign or Network Solutions retracting IPs and domain names from governments and organizations for actions they don't like? Under §230, they're obviously entitled to do so.

Its nuanced and it really depends on what they're removing, why they're removing it, and how it will affect people in the end.

A corporation removing a site with the goal of stripping vulnerable women of their reproductive rights and and policing their bodily autonomy by reporting them to the state is something I support 110%.

HN is all about fighting institutions that are actively eroding our right to privacy until said institutions set their crosshairs on women (or other minority groups). It's tiring.

Aren't children in the womb a more vulnerable minority group?

You're entitled to answer "No." to that question, but please don't say it's tiring looking down from your moral high ground as if your position is the only one that cares about human rights.

This is a complex issue, and, for what it's worth, I think there are multiple problems with the Texas legislation and the court's reaction to it.

Freedomlist.io

> political culture war

What's happening in Texas is deeply tied to Christian Dominionism.

> It shows they value being part of the political culture war over providing a good service to any customer.

Why assume that? I think they just don't want to deal with the legal questions around people submitting other people's PII.

> GoDaddy took action after Gizmodo reported that Texas Right to Life's new website, prolifewhistleblower.com, seems to violate a GoDaddy rule that says 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."

There is nothing political in this instance. This violates their ToS, and even without that, this is a normal reaction to what most legal experts consider an activist legislature stunt that will not stand a real legal challenge. Even another Supreme Court justice called the decision to not issue a stay for this vigilante law "stunning", so let's not clutch pearls here.

I think you're deceiving yourself. Corporations are not doing "stunts" or putting "the political culture war" over business; they have been forced to take sides because of what is obviously toxic for their business.

Any company of significant size that's not totally controlled by a single person doesn't side with "good" or "evil" but with what they think is consistent with survival and profits.

If you think the law is a good thing, maybe you do not focus on the logistical problems it causes for even a non-ideological business.

There was an article about Uber and Lyft indemnifying drivers against lawsuits over driving people to abortion clinics, I think, that illustrates this - they protect their business, and then they put a veneer on it that they are doing it for the reasons many people want to hear.

Mandatory disclaimer: I’m very pro-choice.

This feels like an action that will make GoDaddy popular on the left, but again is murky territory when it domes to publisher vs platform.

It looks like GoDaddy isn’t even using their own policy correctly, as the pro-life site isn’t collecting private information, it’s just encouraging people to report via the official government sites.

I miss the old days of hosting providers being neutral and just hosting material and removing illegal content after contact by the appropriate authorities.

Activist corporations may be popular when they advocate for causes we like, but make it difficult to know what they do allow. In this case the pro-life organisation, while they are jerks, are just advocating a cause GoDaddy disagrees with without actually violating a policy - while begs the question, what other political causes will GoDaddy ban you for supporting?

I always find it funny when I see the same people complain about companies lobbying for legislation and then cheer on this behavior.

Surely you can see the difference between a company trying to change legislation and a company choosing its customers?

Even if you think that corporations should be allowed to influence legislation just as its individual employees can (if they are citizens), it's much easier to boycott a company whose policies you don't like than to boycott the laws of a government you don't like.

(In case the downvoters are incorrectly inferring my opinion on these matters, I should say that I'm not trying to make an argument in support of either corporate lobbying or corporate censorship).

>a company choosing its customers

???

But they literally just banned one of them ...

"Banning" a customer is a way of saying "choosing" only possibly implying a monopoly, right?

Of course, they don't have a monopoly, so "choosing" seems like a better word to me.

> are just advocating a cause GoDaddy disagrees with without actually violating a policy

For all we know they may not even disagree with it and can just see which way the wind is blowing. Which would be even worse, if true.

>what other political causes will GoDaddy ban you for supporting?

They already kicked off some progun website.

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