Building Technology Survivors Can Trust

As an online platform that supports survivors of sexual harm, domestic violence and childhood abuse, we are extremely intentional about every decision we make. This includes the tools we build, the systems we use, and the design choices that determine how survivors experience our digital community.

This article is the first in a new series about the technology behind our platform. We will explore how community, privacy, and trauma-informed design all come together to create a digital platform built for healing, plus a bit about what we’re continuing to develop in the coming months.

Who We Are and Why We Exist

As we enter our 7^th year as an established nonprofit, we want to take a moment to reintroduce ourselves, specifically about what makes us unique. Our mission to build safe online spaces for survivors to share, connect, and heal drives everything we do. What makes that possible, and what sets us apart, is the combination of survivor-centered research and purpose-built technology working together.

Since our founding in 2019, 1,788 survivors have shared their stories on our platform. Over 1,500 of those stories have been contributed for industry research, with full survivor permission. 

Our community has now reached over 500,000 people, including survivors who have shared their stories and an even larger group of survivors, advocates, and allies who engage with that content. These groups may come to our platform for different reasons and have different needs, but both are equally important to our community. Some contribute their experiences directly to the platform; others find connection, validation, or resources without sharing their own stories, which is still just as meaningful.

Additionally, we’ve answered over 750 survivor questions and connected over 300,000 community members to trusted resources. Our platform also represents stories from over 75 countries. We extend our infrastructure through white-label partnerships, giving organizations the ability to use our technology for their own branded, trauma-informed healing spaces.

As our community grows, so does our responsibility to build technology that is secure, trauma-informed, and grounded in lived experience. Next, is a closer look at the systems and design decisions that make this possible.

How The Community Platform Works

Our online community platform was built by survivors, for survivors. Its trauma-informed design, community features, and underlying technology make it a meaningful digital space for survivor healing and support.

Core Community Features

Our survivor community platform includes four core features:

• Anonymous storytelling: A safe community starts with the ability for survivors to share their experiences anonymously. They can return to or edit their story at any time, and control whether their story is used for research or across social media.

• Messages of Support: Released as part of our V2 Community Platform, this feature gives advocates and allies a way to publicly show up for survivors in our community.

• Survivor Q&A: Community members can submit questions to a trauma-informed member of our team. As the volume of questions we receive continues to grow, we built our first AI tool designed specifically to support this work. This Q&A agent helps draft research-backed responses for our trauma-informed expert to review, edit, and personalize. Answers are published on the platform so other survivors facing similar experiences can benefit too.

• Resource referrals: We connect survivors to trusted resources, including RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline, NO MORE Global Directory, and more. We have expanded our global resource infrastructure across 28 countries.

Platform Experience and Engagement

The tagging system is a key feature supporting our research and community discovery. Survivors can select tags to attach to their story, including self-reported identity, information about where the abuse took place, relationship to the person who caused harm, sexual orientation, and their age at the time.

The platform also incorporates trauma-informed design elements, such as escape buttons and grounding exercises informed by research. This allows survivors to leave if needed and take a break from sensitive information, all on their own terms.

The platform is also automatically curated. We dynamically score and surface survivor stories, questions, and messages by using factors like country of submission, views, reactions, upvotes, and comments. This ensures that more survivor voices are highlighted and seen across the entire community.

Technology and Security

Our platform supports anonymous story submission and encrypted data storage. Survivors can leave their email to be notified when their story has been reviewed and published. We encrypt all data at rest and in transit, to protect our community’s information.

This means that all content is secured, whether it’s being stored (at rest) or shared (in transit across networks). Our security infrastructure includes regular software updates, TLS hosting (which protects the connection between a survivor's browser and our platform), and encrypted backups.

Additionally, access to survivor stories is limited to authorized staff members for secure content moderation. Any identifiable content is redacted before a story is published.

How We Protect Our Community

Privacy and safety shape every technology decision we make. Our design choices and encryption tools allow the platform to serve as a healing space, plus as a foundation for future research.

Privacy by Design

Privacy has been embedded in our platform since the beginning. We understand the real risks survivors take when sharing sensitive experiences, and we've designed every feature with that in mind.

We collect only the information necessary to operate the platform safely and support the community. There are no public identifiers, anonymity is woven into every design decision, and identifiable details are carefully redacted to protect survivor privacy.

Additionally, survivors always retain agency over their stories. They can edit or delete their story at any time, and any use of their story for research requires explicit opt-in consent.

Safety and Moderation

We approach safety with structure and compassion. Our leadership team reviews every story, comment, and message before it appears on the platform to ensure it aligns with the Community Guidelines. These guidelines prioritize empathy, respect, and supportive interaction, and prohibit hate speech, harassment, and harmful content.

Our Review Guidelines govern how we assess each submission. We redact names, proper nouns, social media handles, and any promotional content. We place a trigger warning on stories with any mention of self-harm, in addition to sending the author mental health resources.

Any mention of suicide or harm to others is classified into low, moderate, and high-risk categories:

• Low risk: The story is published with a trigger warning, and the author receives a personalized email with mental health resources.

• Moderate or high-risk: The story is not published. We escalate it to our trauma-informed experts, and the author receives mental health resources.

Trauma-Informed Technology

Psychological safety is reflected in the design of both our community platform and our marketing homepage. This includes an escape button and a quick link to our Resources Hub, which features a global inventory of helplines, self-care resources, and country-specific guidance.

On the community platform, grounding exercises are incorporated at the start of the experience and can be easily returned to at any time. The platform includes supportive messages as you scroll through survivor stories, along with filters so you can choose to see only stories, community messages, or both.

How Our Research Creates Impact

Data shared on our platform (with explicit opt-in consent from survivors) advances survivor-centered research. We use story and message contributions from the platform to better understand healing pathways, gaps in care, and inclusive support strategies.

We have a dedicated research team who is continuously evaluating our platform data, conducting survivor-centered research, and publishing findings in both peer-reviewed academic journals and accessible whitepapers.

Our previous work includes a community case study on survivor disclosure and trauma recovery, and a qualitative synthesis of survivor-provided advice for overcoming gender-based violence across seven countries. This work is only possible because survivors choose to share, and we don’t take that trust lightly. 

How Technology Supports Healing: Survivor Testimonials

It’s no secret that technology can cause real harm. Many survivors know this firsthand, as we explored a key example in our coverage of the Tea app data breach that occurred last year.

But, technology can also be a tool for connection, visibility, and healing. We remain committed to building and championing these tools that support survivors.

Our platform supports survivors of sexual harm in meaningful ways, including:

• Amplifying voices that often go unheard: In today’s society, survivor voices, their stories and experiences are constantly silenced or met with disbelief. We flip this script, giving survivors the power to share on their own terms and connect with others who truly understand.

• Building community where isolation once stood: Silencing and disbelief can leave survivors feeling incredibly isolated. Our platform is built on connection, creating a digital community that is respectful, supportive, and meaningful to survivors’ healing journeys.

• Providing tailored pathways to healing: Our platform meets survivors wherever they are in their journeys.

The survivor testimonials below reflect what this community means to them:

“Hi, I'm new here. I've been in therapy for some years now. This is my second go-round with trauma therapy. Lately, I've been feeling lost and wondering what I was doing wrong in therapy, then I came across this website. I don't know how to explain it with the right words, but reading and hearing from other people who have been through things that can relate to me is something so much different than a therapy session with someone who is trying to understand you.”

^{Our Wave community member}

“Wow, I can’t express how healing it is to have shared a part of my story and have folks read it anonymously and offer words of encouragement. Just the idea of being seen is so special. I realize the story I posted is quite graphic which I could have held back on but I wrote it from a place of feeling quite raw. Thank you for this space and for holding my story.”

^{Our Wave community member}

What We’re Building Next

Later this year, we’ll be releasing new platform programs and features to deepen the support we offer survivors. Here’s a look at what’s ahead:

• Quizzes and Survivor Guides: We are creating personalized survivor guides and a variety of unique quizzes designed to help survivors name and validate their experiences.

• Survivor Community Map: Our community currently spans across 75 countries. This new interactive experience will give our global community a place to connect and access key resources.

• Customized Survivor Accounts: These accounts will be a personal, grounded space for survivors to return to, on their own terms and at their own pace.

• Personalized Healing Action Plans: Within their account, each survivor can create a customized roadmap of goals, practices, resources, and supportive actions that feel right for them.

• Harbor: Bringing it all together is Harbor, our flagship healing program. Personalized for each survivor, Harbor weaves these new features into a cohesive healing experience.

Our Commitment Going Forward

Our survivor community platform is a growing and powerful example of what technology can look like when it’s built with purpose. Over the coming months, this series will go deeper into our tech initiatives and platform developments. The goal is to showcase how our in-house technology team innovates responsibly, allowing survivors to engage with trust as they navigate their healing through our platform.  

As we continue to grow, we’re always looking at ways to connect with aligned partners, whether through white-label collaborations, survivor-centered research initiatives, or broader ecosystem innovation. Expanding safe digital infrastructure requires collective effort, and we welcome conversations with organizations committed to building technology that truly serves survivors.

Reach out for more information on partnership opportunities and explore our community platform to see our technology in action. 

This article has been a look at where we are – the systems, community, and values that make our platform what it is. Next month, we’ll zoom out to share how we think about building technology in a space that demands care, and where we’re headed as an organization committed to digital survivor support. Stay tuned!