A black business woman has told on how she was trolled and harassed on the very app she created.
Dayo Akinrinade says she was subjected to a tirade of abuse from an online troll after launching her mentoring app Wisdom.
Launched in 2021, the app is on track to becoming the world’s largest mentoring platform with 600,000 mentors and just under 7 million minutes of listening time from users recorded.
But her joy at creating the site quickly changed when she became the victim of a troll.
“My team brought to my attention that there was a particular user who had created a talk on Wisdom and was body-shaming me and using racial slurs and sexually threatening language against me”, she said.
“He said things like ‘you know, she's Nigerian, they are scammers’. He also used a voice synthesiser to disguise his voice so we couldn't identify him. He also said he had seven iPhones and a hundred Twitter accounts so even if we kept on blocking him, he would make a new account on the app and he did”, she said.
Even after successfully blocking all the accounts the troll created on her app, the anonymous individual moved over to a similar audio app, Clubhouse, where he continued to launch abuse at Ms Akinrinade.
Clubhouse is an audio app where people can host talks and tell stories with hundreds and thousands of people around the world. But many, like in Ms Akinrinade case, use it to taunt and harass others.
“So one day I got a load of personal messages (DMs) and he had created a new room in Clubhouse and hosted another talk and pretty much started saying the same things over again”, she said.
Ms Akinrinade said the troll even began trying to look for her home address and threatening to take the abuse “into the real world”.
“It was a really stressful time not only for me and my team, but for the users on my app”, she said.
Ms Akinrinade has now acted to stop trolls from using the platform.
“It's not been an isolated incident. I've probably had about three big bouts of trolling. So for Wisdom, I've taken steps to do more for moderation and safety”, Ms Akinrinade explained.
“We've built in a lot of safety features such as 24/7 moderators. And sometimes in the middle of a talk, we can end it if it is harmful. And we hand out warnings, temporary bans and lifetime bans”, she said.
Ms Akinrinade created the app after working as an IT management consultant for one of the four largest accounting firms.
Whilst there, Ms Akinrinade realised she wanted to seek out a mentor to help her through some of the issues she was facing.
She said: “I was working in the City of London for arguably the world's best management consultancies. But throughout that time I felt I needed mentorship from preferably a black woman in tech who was ten years ahead of me.
“Because a lot of situations I was facing, such as discrimination and detrimental treatment on account of my race, required me to speak to someone who was able to relate to me”, she said.
However, she soon realised there was simply no one available to help her and found the only possible solution was to create a community of mentors herself.
“With Wisdom, I am building an audio community with those who are ready to have conversations with knowledge seekers”, she said.
She added: “In essence, for me, it is about trying to help people overcome systemic barriers.
"When you need to level up your life and access wisdom, you can download the app and have a one-to-one conversation with someone who knows about what you want to know about. So you're not limited by just who's in your environment or neighbourhood or network”, she said.
Despite having built her own online community, Ms Akinrinade says abuse of women is still on the rise, particularly against black women.
She said: “If someone was to ask why black women are the target, I would say it's because we have the least repercussions.
"If someone was to ask why black women are targeted, I would refer to the term "Misogynoir" a term that describes the anti-Black racist misogyny that Black women experience.
"This has shown that Black people and women are more likely to be the targets of online harassment than their white and male counterparts - and harms against black women often garner less attention and penalties than other intersectional groups", she said.
Ms Akinrinade praised the new proposed Online Safety Bill for succeeding in addressing discrimination against those from diverse backgrounds.
She said: “The thing with the new safety bill, they mention how the euro games sparked racial harassment and they speak about gender, disabilities and religion. What’s encouraging about this bill is that they are acknowledging that diverse people are subject to more abuse. It validates it for us. I think it's a step in the right direction.”
