The idea that GoDaddy should need to make an exception to their ToS when a case is politically charged is scarier, IMHO.
Your argument definitely stands though: there's not much difference in private information that's requested on a crime stoppers form[1] vs the right to life form[2].
Also, a person’s health-care information is quite private.
GoDaddy had a ToS that includes statements about inquiry of medical conditions
Crimestoppers or whatever isn't asking you to submit things regarding people's medical status, it's asking for crime reporting.
There's been a large amount of privacy with regards to healthcare in the US in general for the longest time. The fact anybody is surprised by this is somewhat unsettling.
“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.”
Most people don’t owe any privacy rights in regards to others medical care.
GoDaddy can say “we don’t want to be involved in this sort of thing.”
But they should not pretend their clients are breaking the law.
There is lots of caselaw involving whether anti-abortion groups can gather this sort of information.
They can.
GoDaddy doesn’t have to be involved in it. But they shouldn’t pretend there is an obligation or duty being violated by the site owner.
"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 any other person or entity without their express prior written consent."
That seems way stronger in forbidding the exact purpose of this site. (With the privacy/publicity/confidentiality rights sometimes applying, but only to specific reports.)
“You will not collect any PII about any entity without their consent.”
There’s probably an implied “You will not use this service to collect …” at the start.
So basically, you can’t host a portal to gather PII on non-consenting parties.
It would be pretty easy for the website to get around that.
The website asked for the contact info of the user and then had a textarea field with the caption “If applicable: Do you have information about potential violations of the Texas Heartbeat Act?”
All they would have to do is change that textarea into a Yes/No radio button.
Edit: confusingly, it said, “we will not follow up or contact you” but also asked the best time to contact you.
GoDaddy could maybe argue that the fundamental purpose of the website was still to facilitate gathering that data, but that seems more of a stretch. "You are using our servers to gather this forbidden data" vs "you are using our servers to gather this allowed data, which will later be used to gather forbidden data elsewhere"...
I'd guess that the reason the website doesn't want to make this change would be that it'd greatly increase their own costs in terms of followup they'd have to perform. Makes it a more high-touch operation.
As I mentioned, it promises not to contact you, and then asks the best time to contact you.
Not exactly high caliber user research going on there.
I also get the impression it’s more about get names they can hit up for donations.
Notice how it asks if the “reporter” is already involved in anti-abortion movement.
That’s probably to avoid duplicates when they add the name to their mailing list asking for money.
The last thing it wants is a security breach, followed by an obligation to inform all of the affect parties who reside in California and the EU.