THE LONG VIEW

Bottom Line Up Front: Victims of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) face significant secondary risks when seeking help online, as major digital platforms—including search engines, social media forums, and AI chatbots—fail to provide consistent, safe, and trauma-informed support, often exposing them to further harm. Threat Identification: The threat involves the inability of online support systems (Google Search, Reddit, and conversational AIs) to safely and effectively assist TFA victims. Key vulnerabilities include exposure to malicious links, toxic community responses, lack of actionable resources, and AI-generated guidance that lacks risk awareness or empathy. Domain-specific support chatbots underperform even general-purpose LLMs, indicating poor design and evaluation standards for safety-critical tools [Tabassum et al., 2025]. Probability Assessment: The risk is imminent and widespread. With over 65% of search queries for TFA assistance returning potentially malicious links and 20% of Reddit responses containing toxic content, exposure is highly probable for any victim seeking help online. As reliance on digital resources grows, the likelihood of encountering harmful content remains high across all platforms [Tabassum et al., 2025]. Impact Analysis: The consequences include delayed or incorrect protective actions, re-traumatization, increased vulnerability to stalker surveillance via malicious links, and erosion of trust in digital support systems. The absence of trauma-informed responses undermines victim safety planning and may escalate abuse. The scale is broad, affecting a growing population of TFA victims, particularly those without access to formal legal or psychological support. Recommended Actions: 1) Implement safety-by-design standards for all TFA-related digital support tools; 2) Deploy content filters and moderation systems to block malicious links and toxic responses on forums and search results; 3) Develop and deploy domain-specific AI chatbots trained on trauma-informed protocols and validated against safety metrics; 4) Establish cross-platform collaboration between tech companies, victim advocates, and researchers to standardize evaluation frameworks for support quality [Tabassum et al., 2025]. Confidence Matrix: High confidence in the prevalence of malicious links (based on automated detection across 11 TFA query categories); High confidence in toxicity levels on Reddit (validated via supervised classifiers and manual coding); Moderate to high confidence in AI shortcomings (based on comparative benchmarking across platforms); Moderate confidence in the underperformance of survivor-support chatbots due to limited dataset scope but supported by consistent performance gaps across evaluation dimensions [Tabassum et al., 2025].