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When Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s president, imposed a partial COVID-19 lockdown on Accra and the Greater Kumasi area in 2020, John (not his real name), a resident of Awoshie in the Greater Accra Region, was asked to stay home as a non-frontline staff member.
With long hours and little to do, he turned to a friend for a solution. The friend pointed him to Jodel, a hyperlocal chat-based social networking app. The initial appeal was its anonymity and harmless conversation.
“I saw the post of this young girl, and her pictures were crazy,” he said.
The pictures prompted John to switch the conversation from Jodel to Telegram and pay for what he described as “tasteful nudes.” The woman, who gave her name as “Nana Abena,” provided a mobile money number for payment before releasing the files. When John checked the name attached to the number, it was not hers.
“It was a man’s name. Peter something, I can’t recall. When I asked, she said her brother had registered the number. But because I was not thinking clearly, I just sent it. The money was not even much,” he said.
He sent GH₵60, roughly the cost of lunch in Ghana. Moments later, the Telegram account went silent. The phone number was unreachable. All messages on Jodel went unanswered. He had been swindled.
He still uses Jodel, but he has not engaged the sexual services of anyone on the platform since. What has changed, he notes, is the scale of the problem. “The situation between 2020 and now has gotten even worse,” he said.
John’s experience is not isolated.
On May 7, 2026, an X user, @black_mofo, drew public attention to activities on Jodel, available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. The user alleged that the platform had become a haven for clandestine sexual activities, with anonymous users either offering or procuring sexual services.
The post has since garnered over 45,000 views, 74 retweets and quote tweets, 41 comments, more than 700 likes, and 56 bookmarks. The claims were corroborated by other X users in the comment sections here, here, here, and here.
The concerns raised are not unfamiliar to those who have attempted to build similar platforms. Barnabas Nsoh, a software engineer with expertise in cybersecurity, told DUBAWA that the tension between anonymity and abuse is a problem without a clean technical solution.
“[Anonymity] is not inherently bad, but it’s how people use it. Unfortunately, I do not see a way to keep both privacy and avoid abuse,” he said.
Nsoh added that he and his colleagues had once built a platform with a hyperlocal model similar to Jodel’s but were forced to shut it down after facing the same challenges.
DUBAWA proceeded to investigate the platform to establish whether it had, in fact, become a venue for sexual solicitation.
About Jodel
Jodel allows users to anonymously post short text updates, videos, and pictures. All content is visible only to users within the same geographical location.
Posts on the platform are called “jodels.” Their visibility is determined by community reactions: a post that receives more upvotes is shown to a wider audience within the defined area, while one that receives more downvotes is suppressed.
Jodel, with more than five million downloads on the Google Play Store alone, operates in 14 primary markets. Ghana is the only African country on the list.
Table showing countries using the Jodel app. Designed with Datawrapper
To register on the app, users must indicate their gender after entering an email address. The app then requests access to the device’s location to connect users with others nearby. Proximity is communicated through labels such as “here,” “very close,” “close,” or named communities.
Table showing how proximity is measured on Jodel. Designed with Datawrapper
In its Google Play Store description, Jodel bills itself as a neighbourhood app for local news, community events, jokes, and social connection. On its website, the company describes itself as “the fastest way to reach Gen Z and Gen Y,” with a user base made up primarily of young professionals and students.
But while Jodel markets this friction-free proximity as a tool for vibrant youth connection, the reality on the ground in Ghana reveals a much darker utility.
Community guidelines breached across multiple locations
In a document last updated on Nov. 28, 2025, Jodel’s creators outline the community guidelines that govern user behaviour on the platform.
The fifth section, titled “prohibition of sexual content,” explicitly frown against sexual remarks directed at other users; the buying, selling, or soliciting of sexual services or content of any kind; repeated chat requests after a user has declined; sexual harassment in any part of the platform; unsolicited chat requests of a sexually suggestive nature; pornographic and other illegal content; and images depicting nudity, semi-nudity, or genitalia, whether directly visible, in shadow, or through clothing.
The guidelines further state that they apply to both private chats and public posts.
However, our investigation found that these rules have been repeatedly violated across multiple communities in Ghana.
While many users appear to comply with the platform’s guidelines, a significant number of anonymous users have openly flouted them.
Posts of a sexually suggestive nature have been identified across the platform, including the use of shorthand such as the letter “F”, widely understood on the platform to signal that a female is available for sexual services at a fee.
That single instance, however, is only a small part of the broader problem. Advanced keyword search also revealed that anonymous users offer or seek sexual services, sometimes accompanied by visuals, as seen here, here, and here.
Visualisation of Jodel’s operation in Ghana. Designed with Datawrapper
Pearl (not her real name) is one such user. She does not use Jodel for leisure. She uses it for business. Each day, she posts on the platform, sometimes text-only, other times text accompanied by a photograph.
The photographs, she says, stop short of full nudity, but leave little ambiguity about what is on offer.
That those posts remain visible in the main chat indicates a dysfunctional moderation system. Jodel’s community guidelines explicitly prohibit such content, and the platform uses automated and manual moderation tools to flag content deemed Not Safe For Work (NSFW). Yet Pearl says she has never had a post removed.
Interested users send her private messages directly from the main chat, meaning her posts reach a general audience rather than being filtered into Jodel After Dark, the platform’s age-verified adult sub-chat, where such content is supposed to be contained.
The platform’s reliance on community downvotes as a moderation mechanism, where posts are suppressed only when enough users flag them, means that content appealing to a segment of the local user base can persist indefinitely. Pearl’s posts, by their nature, attract engagement rather than flags. The result is that Jodel’s crowdsourced moderation model structurally advantages exactly the kind of content its guidelines prohibit.
Pearl briefly engages other users to get a sense of who they are before moving the conversation to Telegram, a platform she says allows her to screen potential clients more thoroughly. She then sends a self-destructing photo or video of herself.
If the exchange goes well, they arrange to meet. Otherwise, she blocks the user and moves on, leaving no trace of her photos, contact details, or any other means by which they could reach her again.
Telegram’s feature that allows users to change their usernames at will means Pearl can operate under any number of identities, shielding herself from users who might attempt to track or harass her.
For Pearl, Jodel’s anonymity is not a flaw. She explains to DUBAWA that the feature makes the platform most suited to her work.
Separately, other anonymous users have used the platform to share photos of themselves smoking what appears to be marijuana, a substance illegal in Ghana.
Nsoh said better moderation could resolve the platform’s content problem while preserving user anonymity.
He acknowledged that Jodel’s existing automated moderation was insufficient, given that explicit posts were still visible in the main chat. “The moderation needs to be stricter,” he said.
He also noted that some platforms address fraud risk by sending users notifications when personal details, such as phone numbers or financial information, are shared in chat, flagging potential scam activity in real time. Additionally, for automated moderation, Jodel must regularly incorporate newer words that users use to sell or solicit sexual services to continually remove sexually explicit messages from the main chats.
Fraud on Jodel
The anonymity afforded by the Jodel platform has also made users vulnerable to various forms of fraud.
A common scheme involves users adopting false identities or posing as women, to solicit money from male users in exchange for nude photographs
Additional cases of fraud have been reported by other X users, as seen here, here, and here, including instances in which a person’s images were taken from their social media profiles and used in the app to defraud other users.
Desmond Israel, a cybersecurity, data privacy and technology lawyer and Partner at AGNOS Legal Company’s Cyberlaw & Technology Practice, says the first realistic step is to preserve all available evidence, screenshots, usernames, transaction references, mobile money details, timestamps, and any phone numbers or email addresses used, and file a report with the Ghana Police Service Cybercrime Unit or the Cyber Security Authority’s incident reporting channel. A criminal complaint may be grounded in defrauding by false pretence under the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), read alongside the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772).
The practical obstacles, however, are considerable. “Fraudsters may use throwaway emails, false profiles, VPNs, borrowed devices, mule accounts, or third-party mobile-money wallets,” Israel said. Obtaining platform logs or subscriber information of the Germany-based platform requires cross-border evidence cooperation, mutual legal assistance processes, and platform compliance, none of which are guaranteed.
For low-value fraud like John’s GHC 60 loss, Israel notes a further difficulty: “The cost and time of investigation may exceed the individual loss, unless the case is treated as part of a pattern or organised scheme.”
A feature that Pearl describes as central to her operations also enables the kind of evasion that makes fraud difficult to trace. Telegram allows users to change their usernames at will, meaning that a user who has defrauded or harassed someone can effectively disappear from that person’s reach while remaining fully active on the platform under a new identity.
Nsoh, however, offered some nuance on this. He explained that changing a Telegram username does not erase existing conversations. Users who have already been in contact with an account can still see past messages and the updated name. “If the account is saved, username changes should still keep the chats, making it possible to see the new name,” he said, drawing a comparison to how name changes work on WhatsApp.
The vulnerability, he noted, lies with new users who have no prior contact with the account; they have no way to locate or identify it after a username change, the loophole Pearl is exploiting.
For Jodel, Nsoh suggested using a phone number. Ghana’s current phone number registration system could serve as a deterrent to fraud, as it is increasingly difficult to obtain and discard throwaway numbers. That, he said, presented one layer of accountability.
However, using Ghana’s national identification card as a verification requirement at the point of registration could be a problem that Israel described as “a very intrusive measure. He said, “It could chill lawful expression, anonymous reporting, political speech, and vulnerable-user participation.”
Nsoh warned that it could create data security risks, such as a data honeypot linking identity, location, device information, browsing behaviour, sexual-interest inference, and social interactions. Instead, he recommended Jodel use on-device video verification, a method he said could confirm a user’s age without any identification information leaving the device.
Israel recommended a risk-based approach: age-appropriate design, default protections for minors, strong reporting tools, content gating, human and automated moderation, and privacy-preserving age assurance, an approach that echoes Nsoh’s on-device verification solution.
He also suggested that email providers could embed account creation dates in their systems, allowing platforms like Jodel to use an email account’s age as a passive proxy for verification, reducing the need for additional checks on users with longstanding accounts.
What does Ghana’s law say?
In Ghana, the law targets the public display, exploitation, and commercial facilitation of the sex trade, rather than the private, consensual exchange of sex for money between adults, an area that continues to exist in a legal grey zone.
The Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) defines prostitution to include “the offering by a person of his body commonly for acts of lewdness in return for payment although there is no act of ordinary sexual connection.” Section 276 of Act 29, as amended by Section 14 of Act 554, provides that any person who persistently solicits or importunes in, or within sight of, any public place for the purpose of prostitution is liable to a fine on the first offence and a misdemeanour charge on subsequent offences.
The law also penalises intermediaries: Section 274(1)(b) states that anyone who persistently solicits in a public place to obtain clients for a prostitute is guilty of a misdemeanour, while Section 275 explicitly prohibits the keeping or managing of a brothel.
As digital platforms have increasingly become spaces for commercial sex activity, Ghanaian law enforcement applies these provisions to online spaces under the principle of technological neutrality, treating public social media pages, open chat groups, and digital applications as extensions of the public square.
As a result, individuals who develop, administer, or financially benefit from digital platforms designed to coordinate commercial sex operations face potential prosecution for pimping and operating a digital brothel under Section 274 of Act 29.
Israel broadly affirms the principle but cautions against treating it as sufficient in and of itself. “Technological neutrality is useful and necessary,” he said, but it “does not solve platform governance problems: rapid takedown, preservation of ephemeral evidence, lawful disclosure from foreign platforms, age assurance, anonymous account abuse, repeat offenders, or a clear duty of care for platforms that deliberately serve Ghanaian communities.”
In his assessment, the more pressing gap is not the absence of applicable law but “enforceability, speed, platform cooperation, and the absence of a refined risk-based regime for online intermediaries operating at scale in Ghana.”
Because online solicitation often involves transmitting media to attract clients, statutory authorities supplement traditional criminal law with modern cyber legislation. Specifically, Section 75 of the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) and Section 62 of the Cybersecurity Act, 2020 (Act 1038) criminalise the electronic distribution, publication, or transmission of obscene, indecent, or sexually explicit content, providing the state with a legal basis to prosecute the digital footprint of online sex solicitation.
The story’s existing legal analysis, however, stops short of examining Jodel’s own liability as a platform. Israel says that liability is possible but conditional. “Safe-harbour protection is not a licence for wilful blindness,” he said.
A platform that has notice of a pattern of harm, repeatedly fails to act, and does not cooperate with law enforcement may lose its protection as a passive intermediary under the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772), which Israel identifies as the more direct framework for platform content liability than Act 775, which governs communications networks rather than social media content specifically. The protection, he said, erodes where there is “a demonstrable pattern of harm, refusal to remove unlawful content, refusal to preserve evidence, or non-compliance with a lawful request from Ghanaian authorities.”
That registration process also raises data protection questions that current legal analysis has not addressed. Jodel, as a platform that collects email addresses and precise location data from Ghanaian users, is a data controller subject to Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), including obligations regarding lawful processing, data minimisation, security safeguards, and transparency.
Israel warns that location data carries a particular risk even on a platform that markets itself as anonymous. “Precise location data can reveal movement patterns, habits, proximity, and potentially identity,” he said.
At the time of publication, the Data Protection Agency had not responded to DUBAWA’s press enquiry, which was emailed on July 20, 2026. During a follow-up telephone call on July 29, 2026, an official said the matter had been assigned to an officer but could not indicate when a response would be provided.
The compliance question is not merely whether illegal content exists on the platform, but “whether Jodel’s data-processing practices, safety design, moderation architecture, and complaint handling expose users’ personal data to unfair, unlawful, insecure, excessive, or undisclosed processing.”
Meanwhile, emails and follow-ups sent to their support and press emails since June 10, 2026, have gone unanswered as of publication time.
Also, the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) has yet to respond to DUBAWA’s request about whether they had documented any cases of fraud on this app. A press enquiry sent to their info email on June 10, 2026, and the Right To Information (RTI) request sent on July 20, 2026, have received no response.
This report was produced under the 2026 Kwame Karikari Fact-checking and OSINT Fellowship, co-hosted by DUBAWA and the Digital Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Information Disorder Analysis Centre (DAIDAC), with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).
