TikTokers and coders are trying to spam this Texas anti-abortion site – Mother Jones
Joel Martinez / The Monitor via AP
Users are flooding a website designed to report people who violate the new Texas anti-abortion laws with false advice. The website was created by Texas Right to Life to help enforce draconian new restrictions on abortion that the United States Supreme Court refused to stop.
The new law bans all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, after six weeks, a period in which many women do not even know they are pregnant. It also circumvents many legal challenges by allowing abortion providers and anyone helping someone seeking an abortion to be sued by private citizens, who can potentially be awarded $ 10,000 plus legal fees.
The Texas Right to Life organization created a website for these reports. But instead of citizens reporting on, say, the Uber driver who drove a woman to a clinic, critics of the law spam her with a barrage of false information. Governor Greg Abbott and Marvel’s Avengers are among those reported to have received abortions. according to the New York Times.
Some of the flood of false information sent to the website appears to be aided by an activist and developer who publishes under the social media alias Sean Black. On a viral TikTok first reported by Motherboard to Vice, Black explained that he wrote a script that anyone can access, which automates the process of allowing them to submit false reports. Every time Black’s script is accessed, new information is generated, which theoretically makes it difficult for the Right to Life group to analyze and ban people who submit false reports.
As of September 2, not even 24 hours after the Supreme Court refused to halt implementation of the law, Black saying Vice the script had been clicked over 4,000 times.
Others on TikTok asked platform users to spam the reporting site with Shrek-thematic porn, among other things. Kim Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, said Vice that this was not a surprise. They had planned this and have been filtering out people who are reporting on the site from outside the country, who are using VPNs, and who have previously posted false information and introduced CAPTCHA to limited automated results.
However, so far, Black has come up with new solutions for each new restriction that Texas Right to Life introduces on its reporting website, and it does not intend to stop. “While I think it is best not to reveal how I intend to deal with this hurdle,” he said. Vice, “I will say that I am working on a solution.”
