Idea How To Substantially Increase Corona App Adoption

[peter-126]

Hello,

Thank you very much for investing your time and energy into this beautiful software project.

I have been thinking about how the adoption of contact tracing apps could be considerably increased. As a result I have come to the conclusion that in democracies incentivation and gamification could solve that.

Here is the idea: A country could reserve a certain amount of money for a prize draw competition on a regular basis (Gewinnspiel). All active users of the contract tracing app take part automatically. In addition, a recommendation system shall be incorporated. Everybody who convinces their friends and family to install the app will slightly improve their chances of winning.

A second wave of infection would cost many lifes, jobs and billions of dollars. What if we could prevent that by utilizing contact tracing apps on a large scale? How much would it be worth to a country to minimize the risk of a second infection wave? I believe that it would be a good deal for its tax payers.

If you like the idea, please feel free to get in touch with me. Thank you, Peter

---

Here are some further thoughts (or brainstorming inspirations):

• Engineering challenge: how could such a system be implemented while maintaining the privacy-by-design architecture at the same time? Think about multiple accounts on virtual machines to increase the probability of winning. Is there a way to implement it without authentication and would authentication for winners be necessary? etc…

• Only people who were actively using the app should be able to take part in the prize competition. E.g. the app needed to be active at least 80% of the time within the last 7 days in order to be eligible to win a prize

• Recommendation system: when recommending the app to somebody else, the recommender and the recomendee shall both have a slightly higher chance to win. Challenge: how to prevent fraud? Limit the max. number of people who can be recommended?

• Add gamification elements: show how many recommendations were made so far, etc...

• Design the system in a way so that many people can win. Instead of 1 person winning 1 million Euro rather have 50 people win 20.000 Euro

• Prize draws should be on a regular basis. There could be a short, weekly national TV-show were the winning numbers (tokens) will be drawn publicly.

• Payment: is there a way how payments can be made to winners in a frictionless (digital) way?

[pdehaye]

Luciano Floridi discusses here through a lottery system. See also here by Michele Loi.

[peter-126]

Thank you @pdehaye for sharing the articles.

The technology and privacy-by-design architecture of DP-3T is beautiful. If all apps were created that way, our digital world would be a better place. But as the late Steve Jobs said - it's technology married with the liberal arts that makes our heart sing.

Thanks again for all your efforts and possible consideration.

[lbarman]

Hi @peter-126, thanks for the nice words :) As you point out, adoption is crucial. Let me flag this as an extension to keep this around. Thanks!

[r-r-liu]

Adoption is important. I think a segment of the population might be "susceptible" to an appeal to solidarity, by which I mean a sense of community, of helping each other. Many young people volunteered to help people who were advised to stay home as much as possible by doing errands for them. Those same people might be willing to use the app in the same spirit, as it helps them to help break infection chains, which benefits the whole community, including those whom they are already helping.