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Comment by jenkstom | Hacker News Reader

As someone who was in an abusive relationship for decades, and my girlfriend is getting out of an even more abusive relationship, there really should be more resources for this. Or maybe there are and there just needs to be a better way to communicate with the people who need this sort of thing.

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Yep, it wasn't until I was contacted by an owner of a charity that handled cases of domestic abuse that I even knew it was even needed. Initially this was a hobby project I did in my spare time for when I went travelling and it's grown from there.

More visibility is definitely key, and charities are already stretched so it's not like they have the resources to get this kind of thing done for them. I've been reaching out to various charities to open a channel of communication to let them know that this is available for them.

For what it's worth, I knew immediately what this was for but read your entire page looking for some kind of explicit confirmation and/or clear description of the use cases. The info given almost seems intentionally coy, as if you're even trying to maintain plausible deniability on the website.

That's the problem with marketing secret stuff. The stuff only works if no one else knows what it is, so how you spread awareness to thousands of intended recipients but not others, using a public website?

Maybe iOS and Android should have abuse prevention as well as suicide prevention resources built into the operating system and phone app, just like accessibility and health support and find-my-phone and emergency calling, so everybody has them, and having something like that isn't a red flag.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/make-emergency-calls-...

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