As an offshoot of technological advancements, social media has been a blessing to humanity. However, one of its unpalatable sides is its ability to harbour evil and social vices. For instance, Image-based Sexual Abuse (IBSA), known in some quarters as ‘revenge porn’ is one of the evil ways bad actors use social media to perpetuate.
According to a report published by Adeboro Odunlami and Temitope Ogundipe in 2022, the non-consensual creation, manipulation, dissemination, distribution, or exchange online of photographs, videos, or audio clips of a sexual or intimate nature typically used to blackmail victims for monetary, sexual or other gains; a form of privacy-related online sexual violence is one of the most common and frequent forms of violence against women in Nigeria.
A research by Richard Abayomi Orishade, published in 2022 used qualitative methods to interview 27 adult women whose sexual images have been non-consensually shared publicly through online channels and they were found to be subjected to higher social condemnation, stigmatization, and isolation based on greater attribution of blames to them by their social network.
This disturbing trend is the precursor for Lawbrella, a tech startup that connects survivors and victims of IBSA with free legal support. In an interview with Technext, cofounder, Adeboro Odunlami, speaks about the inspiration behind the ethic-focused project, the stigma/fear victims face in Nigeria and how policies can reduce the impact of the sordidity.
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The inspiration behind Lawbrella
“Lawbrella started from identifying a lack of support system in the ecosystem for IBSA victims and we wanted to fill that gap and reduce menace. Immediately, we started to do Focus Group Discussions and talk to stakeholder groups.” Adeboro says.
Adeboro Odunlami has always worked on ensuring that technology is used for good. Her career goal has always been for people to build responsible and pro-ethical tech.
“IBSA is a thing. It’s happening on social media, on private WhatsApp and Telegram groups. To girls, young women in secondary school. Boys form group chats and pass images around each other. People threaten girls, blackmailing them to pay and all sorts.” – Adeboro Odunlami laments.
According to her, what Lawbrella is trying to do is make legal support accessible because it is difficult for survivors to access legal remedies.
In a repressed society plagued by a lack of awareness, stigma, shame and fear of retaliation, what Lawbrella provides is a private, secure, and survivor-centred platform that allows IBSA victims to report the abuse and to have their case handled with as much discretion and also as much legal support.
In a stigma-prone environment, Adeboro says that success is having girls and women report their experiences.
“We’re helping people overcome the shame and the fear of not being believed.”
Also, Lawbrella has secured a legal partnership with the largest digital rights lawyer group in Nigeria – a group of lawyers that focus on technology-facilitated problems and abuse of privacy infractions.
One of the biggest challenges the project is facing is societal culture and policies, the law guiding operations. According to her:
“Breaking into the culture of patriarchy for stigmatized people is a big problem. The laws are not as updated and friendly and helpful to help pursue some of these cases. Also, people feel too ashamed to speak out.”
Aligning with ethical standards
Adeboro Odunlami says she is an ethical technology expert, so she didn’t take any chances with ethics and data privacy while building Lawbrella.
To put this into perspective, if a victim uploads a prurient image for evidence purposes on Lawbrella, the platform has an image hashing technology which converts the images to a unique digital fingerprint.
“So we don’t store the nude. The reason is to ensure that we don’t retain explicit content and also we want to reduce the risk of data breaches in case someone hacks into Lawbrella, they will not be able to access the pictures.”
Also, the company has a policy which ensures lawyers only submit blurred images when they necessarily have to submit nudes as evidence in public court cases.
“We implement that layer of protection. Also, we have internal protocols where we enforce strict access controls. Only authorised personnel – just one person and me – have access to the reports and the data. These are some of the things we’ve implemented.”
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With emerging cyber threats every day, Adeboro states that the Lawbrella team is experienced with ethical tech cybersecurity and privacy advocates and the company is staying ahead of emerging threats.
Future of Ethical Tech in Africa
As the menace continues to spread globally, South African lawmakers have responded to IBSA with criminal sanctions, specifically targeting this phenomenon through 18F of the Films and Publications Amendment Act 11 of 2019 and 16 of the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.
However, Adeboro Odunlami would like to see more policies around tech platform accountability.
“I look forward to seeing tighter laws about platform accountability. Laws that guide how apps operate and features they build into content moderation.”
She envisions that Lawbrella will scale around Africa because the issue that it is solving isn’t domestic, but global.
“We’re starting in Nigeria but we will move across Africa. We’re partnering with other technology lawyers to reduce IBSA and reduce the culture all around the continent. Also, we see ourselves providing mentorship to other platforms doing similar things. I and my cofounder are focused on driving ethical AI adoption especially when it comes to intimate image generation by generative AI and ensuring that algorithms are built in a safe way for women and girls in Africa.”
As a word of admonition to other tech entrepreneurs, she counsels them to always see ethics, privacy, data protection, trust and safety as a competitive advantage, not what should be done for compliance purposes.
“When you have safety and ethics in place, you build trust which will lead to greater adoption and achieve commercial goals.”
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