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 still had the app installed on my iPhone because I wanted to learn a new language a few years back. Just recently checked their App Store page and saw extensive data collection, monthly subscriptions and some kind of “gem” currency. Immediately deleted.
But then you remember that people had been trying to learn a single language through their entire lives in ancient Rome, Egypt etc. We are indeed lucky to have gems gamifying the process.
I just don’t know how I could ever accomplish anything in my life without the totally benign and helpful motivation provided by Gems™. They’re gamerrific! ^Buy some today.^
I still had the app installed on my iPhone because I wanted to learn a new language a few years back. Just recently checked their App Store page and saw extensive data collection, monthly subscriptions and some kind of “gem” currency. Immediately deleted.
They tried to gamify the process, you use gems to buy an off day for a streak
Nothing against gamification, but when they added lives about two years after they said they never will I lost any and all trust I had in them.
lol learning a new language needs gems. Jesus fucking christ
That sounds hilarious.
But then you remember that people had been trying to learn a single language through their entire lives in ancient Rome, Egypt etc. We are indeed lucky to have gems gamifying the process.
I just don’t know how I could ever accomplish anything in my life without the totally benign and helpful motivation provided by Gems™. They’re gamerrific! ^Buy some today.^
Duolingo gems are only there to freeze your daily streak and join streak challenges. You don’t need them.
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The gems aren’t as predatory as they seem.
They still seem like unnecessary garbage though.
The only truly useful thing you get from them is streak freezes (basically to keep your streak if you miss a day). I think they’re fine.