Show HN: Discreet dead man's switch for victims of domestic abuse

"We're sorry but dead man tracker doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue."

Yeah fine, but perhaps some explanation of what I would be seeing if I did that would be appreciated. If you want me to enable Javascript, you should at least tell me what you're going to do with that.

If you make a web site with functionality that requires Javascript, and there's no other way, that's fine. But you should still leave the bits that don't need Javascript up, so we can see what we are missing.

Good advice, I'll change that so it explains that I don't use any form of tracking. It's a shame most SPA sites abuse JS to the point that users feel the need to disable it by default.

For sure, but any app store listing would give that away so that kind of obscurity only gets you so far.

Apple are extremely restrictive on how you present your apps, so it will always be obvious what the app is from the listing (which is why I specifically had to use hang man, as the name of the app has to match the general functionality). I couldn't even release a separate app with the same functionality but completely reskinned as they classed it as spam. So I had a problem of only having 1 app and providing functionality to two different sets of users. One set only wants the dead man switch functionality and an initial screen that hides the app is useless to them, and the other set only wants the hidden functionality.

If they were less rigorous in applying their rules then a more secure app could be made and I'm always open to suggestions. This was actually made in conjunction with liasing with a US charity for domestic abuse as it was a feature they specifically asked for.

I mean, this is a good example of a web site that I'm likely to be interested in seeing, but unlikely to need to use the functionality of. It's a great idea for web sites like this to make it look generally the same (if at all possible, or have an explanation of what it would look like), but not work (with a brief message about why) when Javascript is turned off.

I think that's possibly more important than claiming that you won't do any tracking. You sound like a trustworthy person, I'm sure, but of course the less reputable web sites could well claim they don't do any tracking, but then do tracking.

The first paragraph is a way to say "This is what you get when you switch Javascript on", and the second is "This is what you don't get when you switch Javascript on". Different messages. The first is verifiable useful information. The second is harder to verify.

And yes, I agree it is tragic that the world has reached this point.

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.