Losing One's Story: How Vulnerable Users Experience Harm in Online Support Seeking

Abstract

Online support communities are a critical resource for individuals facing distress, stigma, and limited offline support. However, these spaces are not uniformly supportive, particularly for users with little margin for error. In this paper, we examine how vulnerable users experience harm within online support-seeking interactions. Through 25 semi-structured interviews with Reddit users, we show that support seeking is often a constrained practice shaped by structural vulnerability. We introduce the concept of \emph{narrative harm} to describe how participants experience harm through losses of narrative authority, coherence, and space. Their personal disclosures are questioned, reframed, or displaced by others, reflecting asymmetries in voice, credibility, and interpretive power embedded in platform dynamics and moderation regimes. In response, users engage in defensive strategies, including selective self-disclosure, self-silencing, identity separation, and informal mutual aid, shifting the burden of safety onto those already most vulnerable. Our findings highlight how current platform designs insufficiently account for situated vulnerability and redistribute discursive power away from support seekers. We discuss implications for the design of online support systems that better preserve narrative integrity and reduce the burden of safety labor.