For all the controversy over decentralized contact-tracing apps, data show that these privacy-preserving tools saved thousands of lives during the pandemic. National and international authorities must invest in the technology now.
I worked on the NHS Contact Tracing app. One of the worries was, if the alerts were too frequent, people would ignore them. There was a delicate balance between relevant notifications and “alert fatigue”.
Damn I’d love to have been a fly on that particular wall when the pandemic was happening, what was going on with the first app for example? I remember the government pushing ahead with it even though Apple didn’t permit bluetooth to be used in the way they wanted before admitting defeat and using the native mechanism for it anyway.
I worked on the NHS Contact Tracing app. One of the worries was, if the alerts were too frequent, people would ignore them. There was a delicate balance between relevant notifications and “alert fatigue”.
Damn I’d love to have been a fly on that particular wall when the pandemic was happening, what was going on with the first app for example? I remember the government pushing ahead with it even though Apple didn’t permit bluetooth to be used in the way they wanted before admitting defeat and using the native mechanism for it anyway.