Quarantined Wuhan students get app booted from store to avoid homework

Quarantined Chinese students have escaped online learning by giving a homework app tens of thousands of one-star ratings on the app store.

Dingtalk, an online app that sets students homework, has suffered a rating drop from 4.9 to 1.4 overnight after students in the China epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak Wuhan, took to their screens to get the application booted from the app store.

Students discovered that if the app received enough one-star reviews, it would be removed from the store, disabling their access to the homework their teachers had set for them.

"Children were presumably glad to be off school – until DingTalk was introduced. Students are meant to sign in and join their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework," Wang Xiuying wrote in the London Review of Books.

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"Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk's rating plummeted overnight…the app has had to beg for mercy on social media: 'I'm only five years old myself, please don't kill me,'" he said.

Media reports say that 50 million students and 600,000 teachers have been using the app since the beginning of their school year.

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Not all the one-star reviews were negative with one user teasing, "thank you for letting me reunite with my teachers. I'll give you 5 stars separated in 5 reviews."

Schools and most workplaces in Wuhan remain shut following the deadly outbreak.