Quarantined Chinese students have moved en masse to get a homework app taken down.

Millions of Chinese students stuck in their homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been made to use Dingtalk - an online app that sets students’ homework.

This was until they discovered that if the app received enough one-star reviews, it would be removed from the online store, cutting off 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.

“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.

The app has suffered a rating drop from 4.9 to 1.4 after it was bombed with 1-star reviews.

Not all the one-star reviews were negative with one user commenting; “Thank you for letting me reunite with my teachers. I'll give you 5 stars separated in 5 reviews.”