What Domestic Violence Advocates Wish Tech Companies Understood

Insights from advocacy professionals on how technology can genuinely help survivors rather than creating new risks.

Technology Is Not Neutral in Abusive Situations

Domestic violence advocates have a complicated relationship with technology. On one hand, tech has created new ways to document abuse, connect with resources, and build safety plans. On the other hand, it has given abusers unprecedented tools for surveillance, control, and harassment. Every feature designed to help can be weaponized to harm.

Location sharing is the most obvious example. It was built to help families stay connected and help friends find each other. For someone in an abusive relationship, it is a leash. Even when the survivor turns off location sharing, the absence of data itself becomes suspicious. Why did you turn off your location? What are you hiding?

The same dynamic applies to messaging apps, social media, shared photo albums, connected home devices, and financial apps. Every technology that creates transparency also creates vulnerability for people whose partners use transparency as a weapon. Advocates understand this duality in a way that most product designers never consider.

The message from advocates is not that technology is bad. It is that technology designed without awareness of abuse dynamics can cause real harm. And the first step toward building better technology is listening to the people who see the consequences of thoughtless design every day.

Discretion Is More Important Than Features

The number one request from domestic violence advocates to tech companies is simple: make it discreet. Not as an add-on. Not as an option buried in settings. Make discretion the default, fundamental experience of the product.

This means rethinking elements that most designers never question. App icons that look like safety tools are dangerous. Notifications that mention safety features are dangerous. Onboarding flows that walk users through emergency setup are dangerous if observed by the wrong person. Even the app's name can be a risk factor.

Advocates tell stories of clients whose safety plans were compromised because an app sent a notification at the wrong time, or because the app icon was recognizable, or because a search in the app store showed a recently downloaded safety app. These are not edge cases. They are common experiences in the advocacy community.

The tech industry's response is typically to add a panic button or a quick-exit feature. But advocates point out that these features are reactive solutions to a proactive problem. If the app's default state is discreet, you never need a panic button to hide it. Design for discretion from the beginning, and many of the safety-specific features become unnecessary.

Autonomy Over Automation

Another consistent message from advocates is the importance of user autonomy. Survivors of domestic violence have had their autonomy systematically stripped away. Technology that makes decisions on their behalf, even well-intentioned decisions, can replicate the dynamics of control they are trying to escape.

This means resisting the temptation to build features that automatically alert authorities, automatically share information, or automatically make assessments about a user's safety. These features feel helpful in a design meeting but can be catastrophic in practice. Automatic alerts can escalate situations. Automatic sharing can expose safety plans. Automatic assessments can be wrong.

Advocates emphasize that the most helpful technology puts the user in control. It provides information and tools, then trusts the user to make their own decisions about when and how to use them. This is harder to build and harder to market, but it aligns with the fundamental goal of helping someone reclaim agency over their own life.

The best technology for survivors is technology that expands their options without making choices for them. It says here is what you can do, rather than here is what we are doing for you. The distinction is not just semantic. It is the difference between empowerment and another form of control.

What Good Tech Partnership Looks Like

Advocates are not anti-technology. They are hungry for technology that actually works for the people they serve. But they have been burned too many times by companies that built products without consulting them and then expected them to be grateful.

Good partnership starts with listening. Not a single focus group, but ongoing, compensated engagement with advocates and survivors. These conversations should happen before design, during development, and after launch. The people who will use the product in life-or-death situations should have a genuine voice in how it works.

Good partnership also means acknowledging what technology cannot do. An app cannot replace a safety plan developed with a trained advocate. A feature cannot substitute for a conversation with someone who understands the nuances of your specific situation. The best technology positions itself as a complement to human support, not a replacement for it.

Finally, good partnership means being honest about limitations and risks. Every safety feature has failure modes. Every privacy measure has theoretical vulnerabilities. Companies that acknowledge these honestly and work to address them earn the trust of the advocacy community. Companies that make absolute claims about safety lose that trust permanently, and deservedly so.