- The coronavirus outbreak that originated in China has killed 3,900 people worldwide and infected more than 111,000, according to recent totals.
- The coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, has spread to at least 86 other countries, though most cases are concentrated in China.
- Schools across China have been closed since the Lunar New Year, and some have implemented online learning.
- To get out of classes, some students learned that if they gave enough low ratings to their remote learning app they could get it kicked off the App Store, according to the London Review of Books.
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The coronavirus disease, COVID-19, has totally disrupted daily life in much of China. Many schools and workplaces are closed, large gatherings are banned, and more than half of the country’s population is under quarantine, but children in Wuhan showed that kids will always figure out a way to get out of school, the London Review of Books reported.
The worldwide death toll of the coronavirus disease that originated in Wuhan, China, is now more than 3,900, and the virus has infected more than 111,000 people, mostly in China. On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared it a global health emergency. The virus has disrupted travel worldwide, leading to flight cancellations, quarantines, and other breakdowns in movement. On Monday, WHO officials said the virus had nearly reached pandemic proportions.
It’s now on every continent except Antarctica. The US has reported more than 600 cases and 23 deaths, and the CDC has said that there are likely to be more US cases in the near future.
In response, many companies have told employees to work from home, San Francisco banned large events, and some school districts have suspended classes. In China, students in Wuhan whose schools were closed figured out that they could swarm the reviews on their remote-learning app to get it removed from the App Store, effectively evading their classwork.
Here's what happened.
COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, and the city was put on lockdown on January 23 in an attempt to contain the virus.
Classes across China did not resume as planned after the Lunar New Year. Instead, nearly 200 million children started taking online classes.
Classes were conducted using a remote learning app, DingTalk. On the first day back, DingTalk had 50 million student users, and 600,000 teachers.
Source: TechNode
Children across China realized that they could get DingTalk kicked off of the App Store if it had a low rating, so in a mass effort they gave the app one star reviews.
Analytics firm App Annie found that DingTalk received more than 15,000 one-star reviews on February 11. Days later, five-star reviews started pouring in from users angry at the kids for the low ratings.
Source: TechNode
Kids were able to drop the app's rating from 4.9 to 1.4 overnight, and DingTalk was forced to plead with them to stop on social media, posting "I'm only five years old myself, please don't kill me."
Source: London Review of Books
DingTalk is owned by ecommerce giant Alibaba, and has been compared to Slack, another workplace messaging app.
Source: Reuters