“If Someone Downvoted My Posts—That’d Be the End of the World”: Designing Safer Online Spaces for Trauma Survivors Casey Randazzo Tawifq Ammari cer124@scarletmail.rutgers.edu tawfq.ammari@rutgers.edu Rutgers University Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA ABSTRACT Trauma is a common experience afecting over 70 percent of adults globally, with many survivors seeking support from online com- munities. Yet few studies explore the online experiences of muted groups who lack the words to name or describe their trauma. We pull from 29 in-depth interviews with muted trauma survivors who belong to online communities where trauma narratives are com- monplace. Using a spinning top metaphor, we model the sociotech- nical nature of the disclosure decision-making process, uncovering new afordances, such as indirect feedback and transportability in online platforms. Findings challenge prior notions of community engagement and algorithmic flter bubbles, highlighting the poten- tial for algorithmic flters to counteract societal flters for muted groups. We conclude with design recommendations to make online spaces safer for trauma survivors. CCS CONCEPTS · Human-centered computing → Human computer interac- tion (HCI). KEYWORDS Disclosure, nondisclosure, trauma, trauma-informed computing, trauma-care tools, lurking, true crime, web sleuthing, disclosure production, disclosure decision-making, mental health, social sup- port ACM Reference Format: Casey Randazzo and Tawifq Ammari. 2023. łIf Someone Downvoted My PostsÐThat’d Be the End of the Worldž: Designing Safer Online Spaces for Trauma Survivors. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Fac- tors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23ś28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581453 1 INTRODUCTION Trauma, an emotional response to a disturbing or distressing event [103], is a common experience; over 70 percent of adults in 24 countries have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime [21]. According to Chen et al. [31], the prevalence of trauma suggests that billions of technology users are trauma survivors. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CHI ’23, April 23ś28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9421-5/23/04. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581453 Despite its pervasiveness, scholars are still uncovering trauma’s nature on human-computer interaction (HCI) [31], including the role of platform design in infuencing a survivor’s disclosure efcacy (i.e., confdence in their ability to disclose private information [79]). Disclosing a traumatic event is recognized as an initial step in healing from trauma [50] and has been associated with positive health outcomes (e.g., lower levels of distress, stronger self-concept [26, 62, 93]). Yet trauma often goes undisclosed [85], which can se- verely afect an individual’s mental health and well-being [16, 118]. 1 Prior work has outlined factors that can infuence disclosure pro- duction [12], however, scholarship lacks a process model that illumi- nates the complex and often unobservable sociotechnical behaviors of trauma survivors. Modeling this process can help practition- ers understand how trauma manifests in online interactions and infuences recovery for survivors in the sample. The disclosure literature often focuses on individuals who have a basic understanding of their trauma or health condition [12, 55], excluding muted groups (i.e., individuals who lack the words to name or describe their trauma [17]). A lack of language can limit access to health resources and make receiving a diagnosis even more challenging for trauma survivors [18]. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for example, can take decades before it is diag- nosed despite symptoms being present (e.g., depression, anxiety [32]). To investigate this gap, we draw upon a subset of in-depth interviews (n = 29) with participants that describe themselves as muted and part of online communities where trauma narratives are commonplace. These communities include trauma-specifc sup- port groups and alternative spaces for support, such as true crime podcast communities [24, 108] and missing person forums [96, 132]. Using a spinning top as a metaphor, we model the sociotech- nical nature of the disclosure decision-making process and their suggested efects on disclosure efcacy. Results reveal new afor- dancesÐindirect feedback and transportabilityÐof online platforms. We uncover how platforms attempt to close sociotechnical gaps for trauma survivors, arguing that distributing trauma-care tools (e.g., RedditCares) to online communities can welcome harassment and diminish the perceived value of these resources. Findings also show that anonymity helps some participants access social support, echoing prior work [8, 10]. However, we fnd that the fear of di- rect feedback can overrule anonymity, resulting in users opting to lurk for protection [43]. Despite lurking, participants still describe feeling engaged in their communities [100], contradicting prior notions of community engagement [76]. We also note the limits of anonymity designs in Facebook Groups, particularly for survivors 1 Disclosures are also essential for relational maintenance (i.e., keeping relationships functional), social capital (i.e., networks of relationships among people), and social support (i.e., receiving help or providing help to others) [9, 34, 43, 132].