Unloved in its early days, the TousAntiCovid application has found its place in French smartphones. But if the Secretary of State initially wanted to believe that it was “the most downloaded French application in history”, it is in fact only third in this ranking.
The dance challenges and other express tutorials have found a rival for their size, admittedly much less entertaining. In France, the Chinese smartphone application TikTok, very popular with younger generations, was overtaken in 2021 by the very government TousAntiCovid. If this one had a difficult start, it would be today, “A priori, the most downloaded French application in history” commented Friday the Secretary of State for digital, Cédric O, on France Info.
An assertion that turns out to be false: the French music streaming application Deezer has been downloaded more than 50 million times on Android alone. The VLC video player, also French, has been downloaded more than 100 million times, also on Android. Cédric O himself returned to his comments in the afternoon on BFMTV, acknowledging his mistake.
However, with just under 50 million phones or connected watches that have TousAntiCovid, the application distances itself from traditional WhatsApp and Instagram, regularly at the top of downloads. Thus, with the surge in contaminations observed since the appearance of the omicron variant, each day, approximately 50,000 people learn that they are contact cases through a notification from the application.
Nothing, however, foreshadowed such a triumph in the rankings. When it was launched, TousAntiCovid was the subject of strong criticism. Originally designed under the name StopCovid to alert users when they recently encountered another user infected with the virus, the application failed to convince. Associations for the defense of freedoms and citizens denounced above all the beginnings of a surveillance society. It was without counting the“Offer useful information on the health situation and associated measures” that StopCovid, which became TousAntiCovid in October 2020, began to offer.
Boosted by travel certificates and health pass
Above all, the app only really took off when it became the main individual tool to deal with the pandemic. Travel certificates during confinement, national and regional daily statistics to see the evolution of contaminations and the degree of saturation of the intensive care rooms … And above all, a tool for storing the health pass, which nevertheless cost 7 million euros, TousAntiCovid has become – almost – indispensable.
Despite everything, some experts still blame it for insufficient efficiency in terms of contact tracing, many people realizing a posteriori that they have come across infected people without the application notifying them. For its part, the government continues to argue that even if the application “missed” potentially contaminating encounters, those it detects are still very useful in the fight against the epidemic.
So, forgotten the suspicions of surveillance? The government keeps the same arguments by relying on Bluetooth technology, which, thanks to the anonymization of contacts, prevents all the meetings of a given person from being traced.
Update : Friday January 7 at 5 pm, correction of the download figures and the ranking of French applications.