Remote classroom app begs for mercy after Chinese students try to shut it down to avoid homework

A remote learning app had to beg for mercy from kids in China who tried to get it purged from the App Store — all in a bid to stop doing homework. Modern problems require modern solutions, as the saying goes. 

DingTalk (an Alibaba-owned online workflow and collaboration app akin to Slack) got its ratings on the App Store decimated following a campaign of review bombing by students in Wuhan, the epicentre of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. 

You see, DingTalk launched a bunch of new online education tools in January, including features like homework-grading, live-streaming classes and video replays. This made the app a popular platform for schools in Wuhan, where students are attending classes remotely due to the city being in lockdown. 

As revealed by a dispatch from the London Review of Books, this did not sit well with the kids, who were expecting classes to be entirely put off. 

good morning to all the kids under quarantine in wuhan who defeated the app assigning them homework by spamming it with 1-star reviews until it got removed from the app store https://t.co/gDxjivabte

— ????? ℝ??? ? (@zenalbatross) March 7, 2020

“Students are meant to sign in and go for their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework,” noted writer Wang Xiuying. 

“Somehow the little brats work out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4.” 

This is hilarious because many Chinese workers complaint that DingTalk is used by their bosses as a surveillance tool to enforce virtual facetime.

As always, the youth in their purity of feeling lead the revolution.

— Eugene Wei (@eugenewei) March 7, 2020

Wang wasn’t kidding. The app’s page has been overwhelmed with over 15,000 negative reviews as of Feb 11, according to mobile data and analytics company App Annie. Most of which are complaints both genuine (performance and bug issues) and written in mockery. Others expressed concerns about DingTalk’s ability to monitor and track its users.

Ratings have improved slightly at least, with DingTalk holding on to an average of 2 stars out of 5 on the App Store. The minuscule recovery could probably be attributed to the fact that the app has to beg for its life on social media, reported TechNode. In a bid to appease the students, DingTalk uploaded an apology video on Bilibili (China’s take on YouTube) and responded to the outrage with memes. 

“Please don’t give me any more one-star ratings. I was chosen for this job and there is not much I can do about it,” DingTalk pleaded in its video, which has already been viewed around 20 million times. The efforts have supposedly helped a little.

Despite the wave of pubescent anger, it seems that DingTalk’s CEO is empathetic at least. “It’s in kids’ nature to love to play,” noted the company’s CEO Chen Hang to TechNode. 

“If I were in their shoes and had to take online lessons every day, I would probably give a one-star review too.”

ilyas@asiaone.com