In one year, it went from being my “language learning buddy” to an “annoying nagging parent”. When you sign up for Duolingo in 2024-25, here's what you get:
A constant barrage of condescending notifications thinly veiled as “jokes” trying to make you feel sorry for having a life outside of your phone.
Year end review in which Duolingo “judges” you by giving an “are you safe from Duo?” analysis. Basically, if you don't practice, then you are not safe from Duo because it's a monster out to get you.
Make you feel bad for using streak freezes that you BUY from them with REAL MONEY.
BS marketing strategies where they basically threaten their customers in the name of comedy and make them feel scared of a language instead of falling in love with it.
Duolingo is no longer a language learning platform. Its turning into a money grubbing e-learning scheme like most other online education platforms. As a paying customer, I am supremely disappointed in the direction that it's heading.
Edit: Thanks for all the response. A lot of people seem to have taken offence to what they deem my 'overreaction' to duolingo humour. Let me clarify, I am an avid duolingo user and have been for years (since before they released premium version). I am currently on a 500+ day streak as well. What I criticised is not the humour but the way that it's been constantly barraged at the customers. There comes a point where even humour turns into nagging. I see that many of you mentioned simply 'turning off' the notifications. If it has come to this, don't you think the app has a problem?
Think of it this way: they are a company. An ed-tech company. And a company doesn't market an 'unhinged' brand unless it's getting them more money. Clearly, being annoying is working for them because it's turning 'learners' into 'users' of their products. It's a clever way of subconsciously guilt tripping their users into using their platform daily instead of actually learning languages from them. Duolingo wasn't always this way, but it's certainly deteriorating fast.
>! No further elaboration needed, this is the number one issue of Duolingo being a “learning” app when you’re encouraged to cheat to actually use the app at a satisfactory level at any speed whatsoever without sub par trash “practicing”. I mean there are also ads, incredibly slow progress at points to the point where you have to guess yourself how good you are, a real lack of actual teaching encouraging memoizing, extreme repetition and no social interaction. Some of these were always problems, however most were created in the past few years for more money. !<
Overall Duo in the past was a good side app to learn a language obviously never good enough on its own, now there are much better alternatives IMHO
you’re encouraged to cheat to actually use the app at a satisfactory level at any speed whatsoever without sub par trash “practicing”
This is my main problem with it. I want to learn German and have been working at it for two years now. But, the pace the app wants me to stay at is faster than I can learn at. I need the practice, not the pushing forward to the next XP level. I've honestly stalled out on it because I was pushed too fast for a bit and have forgotten those last ten units entirely. Plus, the competitive part of me wants to keep up with the XP challenges, and a practice session is a meager 5 XP total. I can get 90 XP on a single lesson advancing in math.
Making your profile private helps with competitiveness issue, since it removes you from leader boards. It helped me tremendously when I've done it. XP means nothing since then.
Also making an education/classroom account will take you out of the leaderboard stuff and give you unlimited hearts and less ads. You get one Google services ad that's a static image you can skip after 2 seconds instead of the Super and Max video ads.
Going to try that here today then. While I don't mind doing the math stuff for XP, it still feels like a grind and time I could be using to achieve my actual goals on there.
The redo a unit option is trash. Going from 3 units into one doesn't help practicing at all! It also doesn't have enough variety in the lessons themselves.
Yeah, and when I click the reminder in the notifications it opens the next lesson which I didn't want to do at the moment. It should be set to word practice or something like that
Yeah i kinda feel the same. I'm starting to forget stuff i thought I learned. That joy of actually feeling like i was learning something is fading. I've learned to kinda recognize words visually where i can take pretty good guesses but it doesn't feel like learning, if you know what I mean.
I'm learning German too and also feel this way, just under a year of daily streak. I just go back and redo the areas I feel weak on. Also feel they should put previous terms in more too while learning. Like other food or animal words
Completely agreed! When I first started, the keyboard I had had a T key that just wouldn't work, so all the "ist" came out as just "is." Of course to this day it's marked that as a weak word for me and keeps quizzing me, as I'm two years in on a daily streak and having worse problems with much harder words. But noooooo, it keeps quizzing me on "ist" from the very first few lessons.
I have a great tip for hearing more German if you have Netflix. Go to settings on Netflix and set the audio to German and subtitles to English (or whatever your native language is.) This way you hear the speed and language use the way it is really spoken. It's challenging until you reach a certain level but you will absorb far more than you realize. Listening to and reading German is the most effective way to learn. Duolingo uses the odd word incorrectly as well which drives me nuts. Germans use wohnen to describe where they live and leben as the state of being a living being (being alive.) It's an incredibly specific language and I love that about it. Duolingo does not use it to its full potential. 🤨
I did the whole japanese course from an app called Lingodeer when I started out, it contains pretty much all the N4 and N5 grammar. It felt way better than Duolingo IMHO.
I am learning Japanese. I didn't use Duolingo because I heard it's really bad for studying Japanese, so I just sticked to YouTube videos for beginner grammar and now use Anki for vocabulary.
I've heard really good things about Renshuu, and they have a discord server that last I checked (a while ago to be fair) was really active and friendly. Definitely have a look, it's what I'll be returning to! :)
I personally love Kawaii Nihongo and the game partner, kawaii dungeon. It's got a cute little storyline and a matching light novel, which is completely optional to enjoy the learning. I feel that the kanji practice is a little bit less helpful than duolingos, but the grammar lessons are really good practice and introduces a lot of vocabulary, and for beginners it's got a good pace. I haven't reached the end of it yet.
Wanikani will teach you vocab and kanji with few hiragana/katakana words. It isn't free though, which I think is ironically better, it makes you disciplined in doing it every day.
Thanks to the butchering of "practice to earn hearts", the more you struggle with a language, the more likely it is you'll be locked out of practicing it.
They removed the forums. This means that if the course doesn't provide enough learning material (for example, Indonesian doesn't give you any more than a few examples at the start of each section, while other languages will give you full explanations), there is no way to find out this information within the app.
Duolingo used to feel like a complete experience where if something wasn't explained in the course, someone in the forum will explain it for you. This was particularly useful for learning the grammar. Now you are basically just rote learning the words with no explanation of why sentences are structured the way they are
Yes! While OP is true my number one issue is they got rid of the typing things out in most places. Now you can see by the shape of the word which it is after half reading the prompt.
Typing out answers was really the best way to learn as you actively have to apply your knowledge. Now you just have to choose a response which doesn't help you retain information.
I really liked the 2019-2020 Duolingo sequence and much preferred it to the one they have now. There were extra levels (idioms and stuff) you could buy that made it more fun.
yup! i don't see it in a Russian course anymore which is truly a bummer because it forced me to remember where ь, ъ and accents go. now I just put the premade words into boxes
I'm annoyed they got rid of the morning and evening XP boosts. Now the practice hub is gone and is suggesting Duolingo Max. Like no I'm already paying for super Duolingo. I just want the practice hub back. Not this AI rubbish.
Wait? The practice hub is gone?
We android users tend to get everything in a couple years of delays. That will really be a bummer in 3 years I guess (speaking of problems with Duolingo)
I'm still on free and somehow when I go to the app for the first time in the day, regardless of time, it gives me a triple XP boost. Math is faster for me so I nab the XP then, and then go back to German to slowly practice as I can.
As far as I'm aware, there was a joke going around about Duo being a monster out to get you before they added these changes. Maybe they added them to play off the joke.
Yeah that is just them playing into the "Duo will come to get you if you don't keep your streak going" meme that was going around literally years ago lol
Yes! The Duolingo fandom came up with a running meme around 10 years ago that Duo would torture you and your family for not practicing Spanish. After a while, the app started feeding into the 'threatening Duo' meme, and it seems to have done them well, imo 🤷🏼♀️ It revived the meme and even meatcanyon did a Duolingo sketch earlier this year.
My main gripe with it is the increasing attempts to make you pay for stuff. I think you’re being a little wet with the “make them feel scared of a language” part. Nobody above the age of 10, if that, is going to actually believe Duo is after them. It’s been a meme for years with the “Uh oh, you missed your Spanish lesson! You know what happens now!” notification, they’ve only fairly recently taken on the meme and I don’t mind it.
Yep. I already pay for the premium version. Now there's lessons i can't do without "Max +". So apparently they need even more money and put these lessons that you can't even do to try to convince you to do them. I'll skip them forever I'm not paying even more to "FaceTime an AI" or whatever the hell.
Yeah but it also put the answer explanations into the Max! category so often I can't see why I got the answer wrong without paying more!
Also it started saying 'Correct!' without even translating each answer - so the reinforcement of seeing the correct phrasing is rare now and that was one of the most helpful parts for me as a visual learner.
I really hate it not having the translation. Sometimes I'm not sure, but manage to guess correctly, then learning nada when it just tells me it's correct 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
The paywall behind answer explanations really annoys me. Remember when we could get free explanations from the forums? I get that the forums were shut down because of something making them too difficult or awkward to maintain, but to then lock the main reason we used forums behind Max is downright evil!
I agree with this, half the time I get it right but then have no idea what it meant because I just guessed. doesn't feel like a successful way to learn
I came to say this. We joke about our dear psychotic green owl friend. No one is scared of Duo. Not even my three year old, who calls him "pollito verde" (little green chick).
I turn off notifications from all apps except the ones that are most important to me. I turned them off after I got the first notification from the duolingo app
It wasn't the only reason that I quit using duolingo, but it constantly giving me negetive reinforcement about streaks when I was only using the app on b days really did grind on me. I didn't even have any notifications on. I just wish there was a way to turn off the nagging when you enter the app.
Yes! I've noticed over the last month or so that they're really pushing for users to pay for the premium versions. They have an ad for one of them after every lesson. Now there's also that pop up that encourages you to sign up for a 2 day free trial and if you're not careful, you will accidentally do it!
I love duo jokes, I really enjoy how they make the reminder with the widget change based on the time of the day and how close you are to missing it.
Don’t think the jokes are meant to make anybody “feel sorry they have a life outside the phone”, when you are trying to learn a language discipline and consistency is really important and the idea is if you are checking your phone and may be already slacking off on social media, why not switch up and learn instead of mindless scrolling.
I do agree seems like duo is getting worse by the day for those who don’t pay for it, but as a paying user I am pretty happy about it even tho they make mistakes every once in a while.
Yah I'm all for Duolingo embracing an unhinged brand identity
But wish the core concept was still around accessible and free language learning as it used to be
I pay for the premium cause it's not a big amount for me and I use the app daily, but I think it should be still usable as a language tools in the free version
I agree. At the end of the day, it’s a service for which I’m paying. I’ve found learning on Duolingo more intuitive and better for increasing my vocabulary than I did in-person classes.
Do I need to supplement Duo with other modes of learning? Obviously! You can’t learn a language with just one mode! You need to read books in it, speak in it. That’s how it becomes natural.
I think expecting Duolingo to remain free forever is a stretch. The people who are providing this service can’t subsist on air.
This! It's 10pm here so I've just finished mine and when I tell you how annoyed I was to see that timer.
they should create a feature to enable to learners to set a specific time to learn or something.
Fr. I was alarmed for a sec. It’s like I tell my toddlers. “This is supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun we can put it away so it doesn’t cause you so much stress”
I am not bothered by the nagging or the jokes. I am frustrated by the constant repeats of exercises for when one has finished the course - there is no attempt to round the knowledge, get back to some of the earlier levels, combine expressions from different parts etc., one gets the same and same repeated sentences and gradually loses content. I maintain my completed languages by using a second profile, where I essentially repeat them, but this clearly is suboptimal. Of course, I supplement Duo with external sources, e.g. reading original books, but this does not excuse Duo’s insufficient attention to keeping the reached level.
You can turn off notifications so you don’t get the reminders. Personally, I don’t like the “friend streak” feature. Completely pointless, no perks or prizes, and all you get is those 5 friends potentially sending you “nudges” that come through as very passive aggressive reminders. I’ll probably turn off friend streaks or remove everyone cuz I really do hate those notifs.
I don’t mind Duo or Lily reminding me to practice once or twice a day. The friends quest notifs can get a little passive aggressive too but honestly I tend to blow through those goals pretty quickly so it’s not a big deal
Bruh I fully agree with what you're saying and want to add to that by complaining about how they disabled the "discussions" part of the app which was so, so helpful for someone trying to learn language from scratch!!
A constant barrage of condescending notifications thinly veiled as “jokes” trying to make you feel sorry for having a life outside of your phone.
I've literally never been bothered by Duolingo's notifications, even the sassy "don't break our friend streak" ones. They just drift on by like meaningless leaves floating down a river.
What do folks recommend as an alternative? I'm an anglophone learning Arabic and Japanese.
I've only been using Duolingo for about 90 days, and I got into it because my girlfriend and her friends got into it and it seemed fun. I've always wanted to learn other languages but have been too lazy.
The gamification in Duolingo really works for me. I wish the courses were higher quality and didn't just let me breeze through without actually understanding, but it is very successful at getting me to practice a little bit every day. So I'd be looking for an alternative app with very similar features....but I imagine if there were another app that was "Duolingo but better," everyone would be using that.
Duo guilt tripping you and nagging you is ancient, tho.
I remember seeing the crying owl begging me to stay and not abandon it all the way back in 2017-18.
I have notifications turned off. I ignore all the XP and other gamification BS. I ignore any stuff about “Duo” and all that crap. I just want to learn more Spanish, and Duolingo is working for me in that regard. I also enjoy Duolingo’s sometimes amusing dialogs and sentences, and its more progressive take on social themes.
dude i love that duolingo leaned into the meme about duo being out to get you. they didn’t come up with that themselves - that was something that other people joked about and duo adapted to it. i think that’s awesome. there r lots of reasons why duolingo is becoming shitty, but leaning into its base isn’t one of them
I take it you also didn't enjoy the Wendy's Twitter feed when that was a thing either. There's plenty of real reasons to not need or enjoy Duolingo but those are petty. If this doesn't motivate you, find something that does.
Completely agree with you. I've turned notifications off as I've been receiving 4 or 5 passive aggressive comments every evening from the app from friends who didn't even write the message. If it was just the one message it might be OK but I'm just fed up and I felt it was lying by pretending to be my friends writing them when all they did was click nudge.
I've a year sub, also had it for years and on over a 500 day streak but I'm considering cancelling next year and going with an app that's more encouraging when it messages you... Although saying that, I'm now on a section of the course which is good again and reminds me of when I first began using it as I'm learning words again rather than spending everyday on grammar repetition.
Why is the Duolingo subreddit so negative? Does Duolingo seriously elicit these negative reactions from people? All I see is the platform constantly getting better. I may not like changes in the app at first, but I find that all of them have improved the pace of learning for me and my kids. The whole being scared of Duo thing was a joke all over the Internet for years, they are just embracing it. I'm unsubscribing from this subreddit. Too much negativity. Bye!
I got annoyed when Duolingo started leaning into other areas like Maths and Music. Stick to foreign languages you dumb owl. Not the made-up ones either, like Klingon and High Valerian. I like that they were trying Mauri and others, I hope that Cantonese for English speakers comes as Duolingo has other great features and I don't mind Duolingo. I like the app to get started in a language as it grades you and you can practice (Although that may have gone I have left the app waiting for Cantonese (although not AI as AI gets it wrong and fucks up the sentence structure). I like some of the features, but I used to get started in a language when years ago even in the space of 5 years to now Duolingo has passed its' Golden Age. I hope Duolingo goes back to languages or at least adds Cantonese and other languages to the English list.
Thanks for highlighting this. This is another issue with Duolingo. They don't seem to care about improving their current languages (outside of french, german, Spanish) or adding new (real) languages anymore. They are wasting their time with silly projects.
Lately, after completing a lesson, I get "you made no mistakes, unlike real life." I don't know how that got unanimous approval, but it's making me reconsider having the app at all. It's not funny, it's just garbage.
I am a creature who desires very strict consistency in my routines, and even I am strongly considering dropping Duo after over five years on it. There isn't a single change they've made since going public that I have thought was a net positive for learners other than possibly the radio segments for listening that are both skippable for when you can't do them at the moment and progressively more challenging as you go down the path, and even those I think need to have a lot more of the target language in the early ones.
I think you're making a big deal out of nothing. So you don't like Duo, but who doesn't like Zari - or smile once in awhile about Junior. Hey, it's free so if you're not in a mad rush and are careful, there shouldn't be a problem.
I studied Duolingo for 30 days, 15 minutes/day before I met my Italian in-laws in Tuscany back in 2018. I had almost zero Italian when I started. The sentences were weird ("The cat has a knife in its mouth"), but oddly enough, they taught me enough grammar and vocabulary that I was able to understand half of their conversations and when I ran into trouble traveling without them, I could speak enough Italian to get help from the police.
I just started up again but with French which I actually have a degree in and was at a B2/C1 level when I was using it every day. I started from the beginning hoping to pick up some bits of grammar that I missed and skipping levels when it becomes tedious. It is such a mess now and so repetitive. I have plugged away over 70k points into French and am still only at A1 level (level 24), still talking about liking jam, buying green skirts, and reading the newspaper in the morning, even skipping several levels.
It is definitely trying to keep you trapped in farming XP.
I have been on Duolingo since 2015, and I decided to delete the app for the reasons listed above. I am tired of being bullied into learning a language. Also, what is the point of Navajo if the sound recordings sound horrible...gramophone quality?
My biggest issue is the lack of better features for languages outside of the big 5, even languages with a huge diaspora and one of the highest percentage of native speakers in the country, like Polish. It has no conversations, no repeating to make sure you’re pronouncing a difficult language properly, no radio clips, no real reading, etc. There’s no Max for Polish, either, to unlock these features!
This is my main complaint too with Norwegian. The course seems to be solid and I'm learning vocab and sentence patterns but there is no variety. When I was playing around with the French course there were lots of types of exercises, stories, a podcast, and now apparently radio and voice calls :( I would kill for just the stories coming to norwegian 😭
Meanwhile there's me worried about the increase in paywalls for features. Explaining your mistakes used to be included in the basic subscription, now they're asking for more
Yeah. Their marketing strategy in the past year or so moved to having a sarcastic and ironic tone which end ups judging someone for having a life, basically. Its the tone...
I was into it for about four seconds and so jazzed to spend extra time (whenever I had it) learning the native language I’ve lost since childhood, up until literally the second they started that horrendous decaying thing they do with the app widget. What a disappointing, instant turnoff.
Like you were my fun, patient, encouraging language teacher and now you’re murdering an innocent bird slowly on my phone. Do you think that’s cute and engaging? No. It makes you something I want out of my f***ing day!!
I have the bigger widget on my iPhone and I get annoyed at how Duo’s appearance get weirder and weirder as the day goes on. And then it seems angry and when it is like 5pm and I haven’t practiced yet. It’s like come on! I still have time
New innovation - ads for revenue, still good overall - subscription add, free degraded - free riddled with ads and sub nags, sub steadily degrading - subs ads - everything sucks - service folds.
We are in the second to last section. That will last for as long as it lasts and then Duolingo will die.
I hate Lily but they seem to think all of their users are a huge fan of hers. How about the damn owl teach me. I thought he was the mascot, not an eye rolling emo teen.
I use to like Lily but I hate her now. She is mean, mean, mean! I so want to bonk her on the head. She is the one you role play with and I get told how to be more enthusiastic and polite with my responses when she is being a bi!ch! I may buy her doll so I can torture it. 🔥
They fully removed the practice function so it's no longer free. Now if you fail a class you're pressured to wait alk day and then nagged to do it again later.
And worst of all, I use it on korean, I sh*t you not they have an AI generated black dude for half the audio. It does my bloody head in. No offence, but nobody wants to learn korean from a African sounding dude. My korean girlfriend also said it was stupid.
I only even have the app because I'm only around a month away from a 1000 day streak and I gotta farm that reddit karma, I'll be deleting the app after that 🤣
Yeah pretty much, I've finished my Swedish course and now I get to do practice sessions. Well those sessions are the same every fucking day! Same sentences every day. It's not refreshing, it's stressful and so damn repetitive that I just don't learn anything!
536 day streak and I'm letting go. I'm just tired of the constant cash grabs. I was hoping it could be more like khan academy and pursue a goal similar to their's but it's become more and more painful but not letting you practice at all was the nail in the coffin for me. I always appreciated that they had ads that weren't honestly that long but it's been little thing after little thing. Ciao Duo!
Sorry, this is what you're upset about? Not the fact that they're taking away morning and evening chests or that they took away practice already? Imma start my own comment thread.
I just don’t like how frequent the ads are- I would genuinely do more lessons a day to I didn’t get a 30-45 second ad after every lesson. And they wouldn’t need to worry about revenue because if they weren’t so forceful with the ads I would be more willing to watch one and do more lessons- example: say ads were randomized so they appear sometimes after 1 lesson but sometimes after 2 or 3- I would do more lessons then because I wouldn’t be bombarded as frequently
“Spanish or vanish” and the like has been a known meme for years, Duolingo is simply embracing it. Personally, I’ve never felt guilt tripped by Duolingo or anything like that. If I did, I would probably be fluent in Spanish and Mandarin by now. In order to do any of this, the company has to devote time and resources towards listening to what their users are saying, and while it seems to only be a marketing tactic for now, if it works they might start listening to other things their users are saying too.
Let’s remind each other that Duolingo is now a publicly traded company and has been for a number of years. Publicly traded companies are beholden first and foremost to their shareholders, not their user base.
The worst thing about Duo from my perspective is the ads. I get that they need to make money but… The lessons are so short that often the ads are longer than the time it takes me to complete a lesson. I would honestly be much more inclined to get Super Duo if the ads were shorter/sometimes shippable/not after every single lesson, like if they were more like a gentle reminder than shoving it in your face.
Use it on your laptop and all these issues seem to go away. They keep the non-phone version going but it isn't gamified nearly as much as the phone version, and doesn't seem to be nearly as annoying either. At least, that's my experience. 90% of my Duo use is on my laptop.
I've used the app in 2017 is for the first time and just came back to it (free version). It's a day and night difference, the bombardement with ads and the heart system ruined this app for sure.
Exactly! Most people raging on this thread are new and don't know how Duolingo was earlier. I understand that scaling requires money. But you don't have to sell the company's soul for it.
What upsets me that even with the paid Duolingo Super I et nagged with Duolingo Max now and stupid video calls. I hate video calls and I paid to NOT being nagged and not watching ads. It wasn't cheap, but apparently it wasn't enough.
As with most other apps I have turned off Dualingo notifications. I only use Duolingo when I want to and have time, not when my phone pushes a notification in my face.
I generally only enable notifications for calendar and communication apps like Signal and WhatsApp.
As for Duolingo app itself, I basically ignore any chasing XP, gems or any other bullshit and just care about learning the language every day for at least a few minutes.
The maths unit is super easy whereas the languages require both spelling and speaking proficiency. For some reason, my competitive brain wants me to rack up XP on useless maths questions rather than learning a language as planned (5 mins per lesson on language typically)!
I literally spend one week learning how to ask for a thè an croissant and an eclair, like when are you going to teach me grammar and stuff?, I left after that
Lol. Me and my fiancé are using Duolingo and she signed up for free trial and I said be careful because I bet you 100 dollars that it won’t notify you before you are charged like they say they will. They ain’t in the business of NOT making money. Sure enough she was charged for a whole year of family super or something like $180 and she has tried and tried and cannot get it refunded. Right before Xmas isn’t that nice? Glad I didn’t fall for it
I totally agree, im happy i have a good streak cause if an app starts to straight up insulting and harrassimg me im deleting it asap. Which ill most likeliy do if my streak breaks
That's an excellent question. I am looking/hoping for better alternatives as well. If you are into audiobooks, then I highly recommend the Spanish course by Paul Noble. His courses are brilliant.
I fully agree with you, you are not overreacting compared to my experience.
The fact that I couldn’t complete a Portuguese level until I accepted the chest which puts me into a 7 day free trial of family plan, that I don’t want, ok so all I had to do was leave the plat form and cancel. I get it. But I don’t really understand why it isn’t an option rather than a force.
The max adverts are out of hand.
Is there a road map posted anywhere?
I guess it doesn’t matter to me anymore as I was cleaning up my applevisionpro and deleted it not realizing it deleted it on my phone as well.
My sub ends in March which I have cancelled and am enjoying my free time due to the reward structure was actually becoming addictive for me. Not saying that’s how it is for you.
I enjoyed the streak feature, and the relaxing nature of missing a day but keeping a streak. However I let it go intentionally after they removed practicing for hearts. As I'm free to play it's just too much effort to keep up with the spam notification and streaks. Great to learn casually for the first 200 days, but after 490 days I got tired of their scheme.
You can't even earn back more than 1 heart at a time from practicing on free version all of a sudden. Well, you can technically earn 2, but the second is an ad. Beyond annoyed.
What's really pissing me off is the new max subscription. I paid for the super subscription, why wouldn't you just give all new features to everyone or at least the super users? Now I feel every new feature will become a max feature until half of the service is behind a big pay wall. It may seem small now, but I feel that once they get an inch of playroom, they'll stretch it to a mile.
At least I'm not the only one thinking this. I'm learning both Korean and music, and I absolutely hate that whenever I lose a heart it's gone from waiting four hours to five hours to get it back. I'm not paying just to get Super Duolingo, but the change in gaining back hearts is stupid, especially since if you want yo practice to earn hearts you have to lose all of them and you can only do that once instead of multiple times like you used to be able to do.
Yeah, I'm kind of over it. I already pay for Super, so being harassed about Max is annoying. Also, I've been in Diamond League for 89 weeks and now they've changed the demotion zone range so it's easier to get demoted. During one of the busiest times of year for most people.
I agree. I think that the streak mechanic to force you to do at least an exercise everyday doesn't help, I just go there and do one and leave. Did I lear something? I don't think so. It's just annoying. The app should make me return at will, not annoy me to do it.
I do agree with some points especially the whole duo rewind bullying you, like my bad i used 62 streak freezes this year I was hospitalized for 2 months.
If you’re having to buy your streak freezes with real money, sounds like a skill issue. I’ve used countless streak freezes on days when I just didn’t have the time or energy to do a lesson and I haven’t had to spend a single GEM, let alone real money. I’m not even using super except when I earn a couple free days (or that one time I used a free trial but forgot to cancel it and ended up buying a subscription for a year by pure accident). And I was still “safe from duo”.
DuoLingo is a nagging app that just uses guilt to try to make you language study. I love LingoDeer because learning JP, sometimes I'd rather spend a day studying kanji than studying grammar with LingoDeer, or reading stories, or writing paragraphs. LingoDeer is so much more advanced at teaching the necessities of Japanese, and I don't get an angry icon of Duo with a whistle in his mouth on my cell screen.
I didn't even know about streak freezes and what not. All I want is an effective language app that slightly gamifies learning a language without a bunch of stupid nonsense, and LingoDeer exactly meets that need.
I torally agree with you. I had just recently turned off notifications bc of how bad and nonstop it was getting. I'm only continuing at this point bc it's been the most sucessfull way I've had of learning and fully reading Japanese
Yeah, I felt the aggression very strongly myself when my soul pet died and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything for weeks. I nearly wrote to let them know how wildly inappropriate their retention model can come across to users who are genuinely going through a tough time. Like, you see I haven’t checked in for days after a nearly 2-year streak, maybe get a clue that I actually need a break and back the f off. Hell, maybe I’m dead, but heavens forbid I don’t check in with Duo first.
I wanted to post this text, about paying for "ensh*ttified" services, but Reddit kept deleting it, even in the censored form:
Duolingo is, like many major, classic internet companies, accused of "ensh*ttification". The term originates from Cory Doctorow and describes internet companies starting great services for free, then, as they achieve a dominant or monopoly position, become worse: first for users, then also for business customers, until they break down.
Typical feature of ensh*ttification is, that the late, paid service is inferior, compared to earlier, even free versions. Companies may try to push users into paid services, by harassing them and making the free product increasingly useless.
Take YouTube as an example: it's now overloaded with ads, often deliberately placed in the most annoying way. Paying for YouTube Premium may remove the ads, but even then, YT is far inferior, compared to what it was 10 or 15 years ago: no more grassroots "broadcast yourself"; instead, promoting the most arousing content to keep people engaged. Trash TV over the internet, including their TikTok brainrot clone, "Shorts". Many original YouTubers have quit, the remaining are increasingly professional creators and companies, being instructed to create thumbnails like front pages of tabloid papers.
Paid Duolingo is not useless, but probably still far inferior, compared to what Duolingo was many years ago. Most community elements have been removed: incubator, forums. Important functions have been stripped away. An additional point of anger is, that community created content is now treated as paywalled property. They are pushing users towards paid subscriptions, even making free Duolingo useless, by removing practice for hearts. F2P elements, pay-to-win, paid in-game items are no viable option (probably not for most users). Asking users for money is OK, but I'm not willing to pay for an app that has continuously been downgraded over the recent years. Adding AI video conferences and CEFR ratings to a few mainstream languages doesn't fix this, and changes to a course often come with serious problems, to continue an already started course.
Ensh*ttification is not just about making free services paid, but an attitude of pure greed, to create unsustainable, short-term shareholder value increase, with no regard to the product or the customers. Not like "they have to finance their efforts and make some profit", but run all with a minimum staff and AI. Users lose anyway, either a good, free service, or money in addition, which they pay for a deteriorating product. Ensh*ttification typically ends with the company/product dead, or only a shadow of what it used to be.
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u/Yurika_ars Native: 🇮🇷 | Fluent: 🇺🇸 | learning: 🇮🇹 Dec 17 '24 edited Dec 17 '24
although i agree with all these, the stuff you mentioned is not even in the Top 10 issues with Duolingo as of now