The Conversation (0)
Ellie Abraham
Sep 04, 2021
As the US state of Texas brought in a controversial law banning almost all abortions in the state, social media has united to take a stand against a whistleblower website.
A vote from the US supreme court failed to block the new law outlawing abortion after the point where medical professionals can detect cardiac activity – around 6 weeks.
The so-called Heartbeat Act also allows citizens to take legal action against a doctor or any person that helps to end a pregnancy, including a person who drives a woman to an abortion appointment.
Anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life writes on their website: “Any Texan can bring a lawsuit against an abortionist or someone aiding and abetting an abortion after six weeks.”
Fines can start from a minimum of $10,000 and the website facilitates people anonymously reporting people who have obtained an illegal abortion.
In the fight against the new restrictive laws and anonymous tip-offs, guerilla activists across social media have been flooding the website with fake reports and information.
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On Twitter, one person wrote: “be a shame if everyone logged on to report ted cruz.”
be a shame if everyone logged on to report ted cruz https://t.co/3O4cxpZ3kq— kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief (@kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief) 1630502143
You should definitely not use a VPN to lodge fake tips with the "prolifewhistleblower" site. Please, don't do that,… https://t.co/MpnAaQuaRZ— Max Kennerly (@Max Kennerly) 1630502654
Going one step further, TikTok user @black_madness21 created a bot that automatically sends a new bogus submission to the site every 10 to 15 seconds.
They said: “Unfortunately it’s not as efficient as it could be, which means it only sends one request every ten to fifteen seconds or so. But, leave this running overnight, then…”
@black_madness21 #stitch with @victoriahammett I’ll see if I can add some multithreading to speed up this process
TikTok user @williamshaughn_ also posted a clip of themselves manually inputting images of “Shrek porn” into their submissions.
They explained: “You can attach any file you want to it. So I just sent them a bunch of Shrek porn and you can do it too if you go to that link.”
The vigilante activism also gained traction on Reddit, where it was posted across many subreddits.
In the r/esist forum, one person explained that to make it as difficult as possible for the system, it’s best to make the reports sound as real as possible.
One person wrote: “Joke reports get easily filtered out. If you truly want to taint their database, send in reports that sound as real as possible. Make it impossible to tell good data from bad.”
Some users who have posted multiple submissions have reported being IP banned from the site, meaning they are no longer able to access it from the blocked IP address.
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