[LINK] Tik Tok influencers paid to promote COVIDSafe app falsely claim it 'traces everyone who tests positive'

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Thu Jul 16 14:51:27 AEST 2020


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: brd at iimetro.com.au




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