When survivors of social media harms advocate for policy reform, their hard-earned expertise can galvanise a movement and initiate legislation. Whether fighting harassment, discrimination, or violence, their voices are a powerful force for change against the Big Tech companies that enable and perpetuate abuse on their platforms. 

“Their voices are the most resonant,” in the words of one activist.

Luminate’s new report, “Advocacy by Survivors of Online Harms: A Landscape Analysis” explores challenges to survivors-led advocacy and points toward future opportunities for advocates and funders. Through careful analysis that includes interviews with civil society activists, the report finds that more could be done to harness the potential of survivor-centred campaigns and survivor-led activism.

The full report is here with a summary of its key findings below. 

When survivors lead advocacy campaigns, it forces tech companies and policymakers to confront the psychological and physical toll of their actions and inactions outside the sterile safety of legal and technical jargon. 

Their experience humanises the impact of Big Tech’s product failures and can help shift narratives, initiate and secure legislation, or inspire litigation. 

The effect is powerful. In our research, activists reported progress on issues whenever survivors’ voices were impossible to ignore. 

One activist working on tech accountability with parents in the United States said no other practice yielded the same results:

Importantly, the focus should not be on the ‘shock value’ of their traumatic stories, retold endlessly. Rather, their unique form of expertise combined with that of digital rights experts and others can ensure that holistic and effective solutions to online harms are put forward. 

However, our research discovered an array of obstacles to fully realising this potential.

Social media harms are not easily generalised. Unlike the global #metoo movement or the anti-gun violence campaign in the US, survivors of digital traumas often lack a common umbrella terminology to describe themselves or even a clear picture of who is responsible, as Big Tech companies escape accountability as mere ‘platforms’ seen as ‘neutral spaces’. 

Our report looked at online harm and uses the term ‘survivors’ to underscore the extreme risks enabled by online platforms. But people who have confronted these risks may not self-identify that way, which makes it more difficult to bring them together. 

The types of harm the landscape analysis identified range from violence against women and children to discrimination against marginalised identities or professional groups, such as journalists or climate defenders. These various actors rarely come together to conduct coordinated advocacy, and sometimes their aims conflict. 

Yet, activists interviewed for the research agreed that organising across online harms could help amplify their common demands, share best practices, and be powerful in connecting the spread, diversity, and scale of the harms of Big Tech. 

There are other systemic barriers to participation that track existing racial and class biases and impact which survivors of online harm are prioritised and who is getting more access to funders, the media and policymakers. 

One digital rights advocate said:

Diverse online harms also receive wildly divergent attention and this discrepancy reflects global power inequities. Western youths’ mental health and election disinformation have received significant support and attention, while other harms, such as online gender-based violence or the use of tech by governments to entrench surveillance, do not have access to the same resources. 

A major concern identified by the report is that some survivors who have engaged in advocacy felt instrumentalised for the purpose of media coverage and that some organisations had not always been sensitive to their trauma. 

One advocate said organisations “... may have already created a proposal and then retroactively invite people to ‘consult’ them. They get credibility by working with a charity without a meaningful commitment to collaboration. The engagement has to be meaningful, not a show.”  Or, as another put it, “You’re the prop.”

The platform accountability movement can learn from other movements such as disability rights movements, and movements fighting gender-based violence who have experience in trauma-informed practices and of fostering advocacy alongside healing and recovery. 

At Luminate, we want our work to ensure that those most affected by technology’s harms are appropriately represented in global debates and decision making. 

For example, we stand with journalists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, a leading advocate for tech regulation. We work with organisations like Amnesty International who support survivors from Ethiopia and Myanmar in their pursuit of justice from social media platforms. Through our narrative change work, we support stories that center survivors’ experiences, such as the Molly v. The Machines documentary. 

Additionally, we support strategic litigation and class actions seeking remedies from Big Tech corporations, providing another avenue to support those with lived experience of online harms.

Survivor-centered advocacy holds immense potential to drive change in the fight against online harms. 

Luminate, along with other funders and activists, can foster a more inclusive, ethical, and effective advocacy landscape by:

Centering survivors' voices:

• Empowering those with lived experience of online harm to lead advocacy,

• Dismantling racial, gender, and other structural barriers to survivors' participation in decision-making,

• Elevating diverse perspectives in digital rights discussions.

Prioritising ethical, trauma-informed practices:

• Adopting approaches that support healing and avoid exploitation,

• Integrating trauma support into all initiatives and partnerships,

• Learning from other movements on best practices. 

Fostering strategic collaboration:

• Promoting alliances between survivors and digital rights groups,

• Exploring coordinated organising across online harm issues,

• Exposing Big Tech's harmful practices and global inequities in harm response.