From 2015 to 2022, I spent hundreds of hours on Duolingo, translating articles, answering language questions on the forums, and helping to improve the smaller courses by reporting mistakes.
There are thousands of volunteers who donated their labour to Duo: the course creators who wrote their courses, the volunteers who created grammar guides (some smaller languages had an entire second course in the forums), the wiki contributors, the native speakers who answered questions in the sentence discussions.
All of their work made Duolingo the powerhouse it is today. Duo was built by a community who believed in its original mission: language learning should be free and accessible.
Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company. And now that work is being fed into their AI as training data.
Well, I've learned the true lesson of Duolingo: never give a corporation your labour for free. Don't ever trust them, no matter what they say. Eventually greed will consume any good intentions.
#duolingo #languagelearning #enshittification #capitalism
I can’t stand the new layout with the crowns and hearts. Like you haven’t learned something unless you’ve repeated it multiple times, it’s disheartening to spend ten minutes in a lesson and get a nearly in discernible bump in a progress indicator.
And then the heart system is crazy, like you’re only allowed to study if you don’t make mistakes. That’s negative reinforcement and makes the process of learning much less fun.
I can’t really progress at the pace I want to anymore, it feels more like a mandated curriculum that only allows me to learn the way someone else thinks I should at the speed someone else thinks I should, which I don’t think helps the learning process either.
Also, they’ve removed all of the fun shop outfits and items I can buy with those crystals, so you get the crystals for no reason, where you used to be able to dress up duo or, I can’t even remember anymore, but there were tons of uses for those crystals. So now I have like 10,000 crystals and I can buy streak freezes exclusively with them?
I don’t have fun learning with duo anymore, and there are plenty of apps that allow me to enjoy studying and learning at my own pace, regardless of how many mistakes I make in the process.
I hear all of that. I also miss the champagne tracksuit :) and the ability to do my weird waterfall practice method to force spaced repetition out of my lessons. I’m not sure that I’m learning any less with the way they’ve set it up, though.
As to the hearts, I subscribed about a year ago for that reason. It’s always been an issue on the app, but I don’t think it’s gotten better or worse. AFAIK, hearts are still unlimited on the website (though that definitely doesn’t work for me. I practice twice a day, and I’m usually not at my computer when I do.)
The one thing that is driving my bonkers right now is that they just asked if I want to sync my contacts. NO! I do NOT want to friend my cousin. Leave me in peace – I only do anonymous social media for a reason. If this goes further down the social media pieline, I’ll have to reconsider and find something else.
In the meantime, I love it, and my ability to communicate in my chosen language is exhilarating.
I still love learning languages, and I used to recommend duolingo to every single person who asked me how I learned new languages, but the social media thing you mentioned is a brazen symbol of a company trying to over capitalize and over expand the system that already worked so well.
Nothing was broke, and they tried to “fix” it, and in addition to that, got rid of fun things like yeah the champagne tracksuit or other little bibs and bobs for no discernible reason.
And the product now is traaaash.
I used to use duolingo to learn every language whenever I visited a country, and I can’t use it at all anymore.
I still use it, and it works great for me. Why do say the program is trash?
I can’t stand the new layout with the crowns and hearts. Like you haven’t learned something unless you’ve repeated it multiple times, it’s disheartening to spend ten minutes in a lesson and get a nearly in discernible bump in a progress indicator.
And then the heart system is crazy, like you’re only allowed to study if you don’t make mistakes. That’s negative reinforcement and makes the process of learning much less fun.
I can’t really progress at the pace I want to anymore, it feels more like a mandated curriculum that only allows me to learn the way someone else thinks I should at the speed someone else thinks I should, which I don’t think helps the learning process either.
Also, they’ve removed all of the fun shop outfits and items I can buy with those crystals, so you get the crystals for no reason, where you used to be able to dress up duo or, I can’t even remember anymore, but there were tons of uses for those crystals. So now I have like 10,000 crystals and I can buy streak freezes exclusively with them?
I don’t have fun learning with duo anymore, and there are plenty of apps that allow me to enjoy studying and learning at my own pace, regardless of how many mistakes I make in the process.
I hear all of that. I also miss the champagne tracksuit :) and the ability to do my weird waterfall practice method to force spaced repetition out of my lessons. I’m not sure that I’m learning any less with the way they’ve set it up, though.
As to the hearts, I subscribed about a year ago for that reason. It’s always been an issue on the app, but I don’t think it’s gotten better or worse. AFAIK, hearts are still unlimited on the website (though that definitely doesn’t work for me. I practice twice a day, and I’m usually not at my computer when I do.)
The one thing that is driving my bonkers right now is that they just asked if I want to sync my contacts. NO! I do NOT want to friend my cousin. Leave me in peace – I only do anonymous social media for a reason. If this goes further down the social media pieline, I’ll have to reconsider and find something else.
In the meantime, I love it, and my ability to communicate in my chosen language is exhilarating.
I still love learning languages, and I used to recommend duolingo to every single person who asked me how I learned new languages, but the social media thing you mentioned is a brazen symbol of a company trying to over capitalize and over expand the system that already worked so well.
Nothing was broke, and they tried to “fix” it, and in addition to that, got rid of fun things like yeah the champagne tracksuit or other little bibs and bobs for no discernible reason.
I also practice exclusively on my phone.
I am glad it’s still working for you, though.