The harm the government is doing it to its own foot, which is either in its mouth or been shot through
Tik Tok influencers paid to promote COVIDSafe app falsely claim it 'traces everyone who tests positive' https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/tik-tok-influencers-fals-claims-covid-app/12459176 Ange McCormack and Avani Dias Wednesday 15 July 2020 5:18pm Advertisements and sponsored content for the COVIDSafe app being shared on Tik Tok are making false claims about the app's abilities to "trace everyone who has tested positive for COVID". The videos frame the COVIDSafe app as the ticket for Australians to dodge a "second wave" of COVID-19 and get out of lockdown sooner. The campaign, called Let Us Play, is being pushed by a coalition <https://www.letusplay.com.au/> of sport and business leaders including Nathan Buckley, Caitlin Bassett, BUPA, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Mitchelton wines, among others. The ads and sponsored content on social media are not approved or paid for by the federal government. One *sponsored video* <https://www.tiktok.com/@jheuston/video/6845380315179945222> for #letusplay on Tik Tok says, "I've figured out how to stop COVID: download the COVIDSafe app." Another *piece of sponsored content* <https://www.tiktok.com/@roryeliza/video/6846313900464475398> encourages young people to download the app so they can safely leave the house. The video also says the app "is absolutely amazing and it traces everyone who has tested positive for COVID." The COVIDSafe app, which has been slammed by Labor this week as an expensive "dud", does not 'trace' positive cases of COVID-19 in Australia. The app is a tool to help health authorities conduct contact tracing, but is only of use if someone who has tested positive for coronavirus has downloaded the app. Despite being downloaded over 6 million times, the app hasn't helped authorities find a single contact they hadn't already traced through manual methods. 18-year-old *Nikita Kostoglou* <https://www.tiktok.com/@kosti.sistas>, an influencer from Queensland who has more than 200,000 followers on Tik Tok, was paid $600 to make a video encouraging Australians to download the COVIDSafe app. Nikita, like a number of other influencers who spoke with /Hack/, wasn't aware that the campaign wasn't sponsored by the government, and didn't know which company was funding the campaign. "They [our agent] just asked us to promote the app so there isn't a second wave and to get our generation of people to download the app," Nikita told /Hack/. Representatives from Let Us Play have not responded to Hack's request for comment. Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean of Computing and Security at Edith Cowan University, said it was unfortunate the app's abilities were being falsely spruiked to young people on social media. "What's unfortunate in this case is that we're not getting the full picture [in these ads]. It's clear that the app isn't delivering in the scale of uptake or in the effectiveness of the app. "Using influencers is one way to get to the younger market, but I think there has to be more clarity and honesty about the functionality of the app and ultimately how effective it's going to be." -- Regards brd Bernard Robertson-Dunn Canberra Australia email: b...@iimetro.com.au _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
