Let my Duolingo streak expire cos I don't want to give them any more AI training for free and this popped up ๐
How badly they want to show me ads, it's impressive. Desperate ain't sexy guys
Why leave the app installed if you're done using it?
Duolingo is a toxic ex.
Come to think of it, an application threatening, shaming, and guilt tripping you into coming back might not be the healthiest thing ever.
The aggressive notifications to do a lesson are literally why I use it. I have ADHD. Without the owl threatening to kill me and everyone I know, I would forget about it and forget all that I've learned so far. ๐
Yeah i uninstalled
DuoLingo replicates all the same patterns as an abusive relationship.
Kinda does wonders to develop habits when you have ADHD.
that's why i liked duolingo when it was a good leanguage learning helper app, it really did keep me thinking about my target langauge every day at least a little
"Streaks" are shitty dark patterns IMO.
I liked it because it was a learning app and I have a tendency to fall off. But paying real money to restore my streak? Hell nah
I wish the whole streak paradigm was time weighted. Like I got over a 1 year streak on my Apple watch over Covid. That's basically never going to happen again. I wish there was some kind of "this is your longest streak in the past
<time period>
" or something. It all just feels so all or nothing.I believe you can get a users longest streak from the public API end point. IIRC it's something like duolingo.com/users/{username} but it's been a few years
people calling every engagement tactic a dark pattern these days is giving me teenagers using therapy speak in wrong ways vibes
Yeah but at least the interests of the user and duolingo are somewhat aligned in this case
Fuck. I dunno what to do with this
Edit: just cancelled my subscription to super Duolingo. Fuck them
I've been using the free version with ad blockers (and browser only) for years. No annoying notifications, no ads, no tracking of user data via an app, and I simply press back on the occasional Super promotion page. The only thing I miss is the discussion page for every lesson/question.
One notification like this and your app immediately gets notification permission revoked on my phone (if not uninstalled).
I have notifications disabled by default, by that I mean the moment an app requests permission I deny it, unless it's a messaging app, an app store that I want update notifications from or something I trust etc., and if it triggers more than three requests it's off my phone.
I understand the logic of doing the streak system, keep you engaged by threatening to lose your streak if you don't do it every day, but it's a double edged sword.
If I'd lost my streak though... I should just go "oh well" and call it a day/quit.
I deleted the app when they said they were going to fire translators for AI. But I have adhd and forgot, several days, even with reminders, to do it some days... It never ended up mattering because they let me keep my streak anyway
Most users aren't logical or sane like you, so this notification may actually catch their eye in their notification tray with 8k other notifications from cancer apps.
I stopped using duolingo a couple years ago because I noticed I was just doing the bare minimum to maintain my streak instead of actually learning something new.
that actually helped me remember that my target language exists, it was good for me to at least have a brush with some learning on the days that i just didn't feel like doing much.
what was the final nail on the coffin for me was duolingo neutering the japanese course, they delayed introducing kanji so hard i was seeing the most basic basics like ๆฏ, ็ถ, ่ช, even ไฝ in hiragana, which made the course deeply counterproductive as reading japanese in hiragana only, when you know the kanji already slows you down considerably. consider: ใฏใฏใฏใฏใชใใใฃใฆใใพใ vs ๆฏใฏ่ฑใๆใฃใฆใใพใ, both mean "my mum has a flower" but one of them has a string of ใฏ you need to decipher the meaning of first before you can understand the sentence, the other's meaning can be understood instantly
That's a shame. Duolingo was never great for learning kana, so I guess they thought to use it more in lessons, but they should've just improved the dedicated kana lessons instead. I had learned kana before using duolingo so it was a smooth transition to take on sentences introducing more and more kanji. It sucks that they're just making things worse since there were some nice things about the app before.
Same thing happened to me. Also when trying something new, failing took something like gems or hearts. That made it so I only grinded the very easy lessons to get the gems and never actually using them.
Oh yeah, that's another thing! They made it tedious to make progress, probably in an attempt to squeeze out more money, but I ended up just losing motivation for actually learning because it became a drag.
Soon you can switch to Lingonaut and take your duolingo streak with you: https://lingonaut.app/
Wife's streak is at 1,618 days across multiple categories. Almost 4.5 years. I imagine it's like smoking at this point.
What is the actual point of a streak?
A sense of pride and accomplishment?
At one point it was gamification to tie the reward center of your brain into continuing to train using the app. Now it seems that it's half that or half https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern to get you to pay to keep that reward system going.
To make you addicted so you keep coming back
Personally, my interest in language learning comes and goes. Doing the minimum to maintain a streak prevents me from forgetting too much before my interest returns.
Sense of achievement mainly
Having heard very mixed things about Duolingo's actual usefulness, does your wife speak or write well in any of the languages she's used the app to learn?
Not at all
My friend learn japanese and able to speak fluently after using the app. Though she does have japanese customer from time to time that she can test it with some of them.
Duolingo is not about learning a language. It's about giving you the illusion of learning a language.
Look fuck the company but Duolingo absolutely can help learn a language
As long as I learn to ask where the bathroom is before I get there I'll bet ok.
Duolingo is so stupidly annoying these days. It has gotten so much worse compared to a few years ago.
Constant bugging, too many popups that are almost as bad as Microsoft products. I want to learn a goddamn language not jump through a hundred hoops every single time.
Not to mention that it all boils down to a guessing game. Some questions have multiple answers and unless you choose that specific one that DuoLingo had in mind it counts as wrong. It also won't tell you why you guessed wrong.
Are there better apps these days?
Duolingo isn't in the business to teach you a a language, that would mean you won't need the app anymore.
I've used Babbel, it seems more to learn a language, but it requires a paid plan to use. It does work more like an actual language course though, with more emphasis on longer sessions instead of 5 min per day.
Thereโs a great video from WSJ with their exec team that talks about how those notifications are hugely beneficial both to their users, and to their revenue. Even if you pay for the full thing like I do you still get those notifications. They arenโt โdesperateโ theyโre targeted specifically to get people to come back and keep learning. They also donโt care about showing you ads as much since their majority of money comes from paying users. If anything the ads are to just get you to pay for the app.
Anyone have a good Duolingo alternative?
Quit your current life and move to a country where they speak the language you want to learn. Get a menial job in a small town, find new friends, and learn what love is. Then youโll know what it truly means to speak a language.
Mango Languages is available for free through many libraries and has an app.
At this point I'm thinking I'll just take a trip to Tenerife to continue learning Spanish.
Other apps aren't good at gamification I hear - and that was the only thing that kept me using it till a while ago. I have ADHD. The leveling up, streaks, etc, is what kept me going when the novelty of learning yet another foreign language wore off - I already had to learn two in school and I only ever really use one of them, you can guess which one.
Busuu is a lot like Duolingo but you also get to trade corrections with real people learning your native language
Yes I love Busuu! I switched about a years ago and I feel like it's actually been teaching me Dutch instead of just brute force vocabulary memorization.
My only complaint is that it's really aggressive about asking for you to subscribe. I just close the popups and I haven't ran into anything that I cant do.
HelloChinese if you want to learn that
Lingodeer for more languages
Renshuu for Japanese
WITH AIRLEARN SEรOR WHITE!
https://bsky.app/profile/liambox.bsky.social/post/3lgq7zqh2ok2s
Look up ALG language learning. That's the best way to learn languages.
I switched to using CBC's Mauril from Duolingo, and it's been good for me. However, it's only available to Canadian residents (or VPN users) and it's only for French. So it worked for me but obviously that covers a small subset of Duolingo users.
I remember a while back, I was too busy for a little while to use Duo and came back to the widget trying to guilt trip me into using it. Because I missed like half a week. It's so toxic and honestly isn't even that useful for learning. So I uninstalled that shit immediately.
I can ask for an apple in so many languages.
They're pathetic but not in a way I like.
Has anyone actually learned any language with duo lingo ?
I learned probably 90% of my Spanish through Duolingo. My reading is good enough that I can usually follow along with Spanish news articles and Spanish spoken at a moderate pace. (So almost none of it, haha) I have hearing comprehension problems with English as well though, so thatโs not Duolingoโs fault.
Iโm definitely not fluent, but itโs not like I wouldnโt know what to do if someone handed me a form in Spanish, either.
Overall itโs just the repetition that matters. I donโt think I would know any less Spanish if Iโd spent 20-30 minutes every day for the past 2+ years using a different app to learn.
I'd be surprised if anyone has. You need to actually use a language to learn it properly. But an app is a good start and supplement.
Exclusively with Duolingo? Could be a little too hard depending on the language. I used it to learn French, also had actual classes and some other resources, but used Duolingo for a while as main resource. It's not optimal as it sucks to learn actually speaking, but it's fine for reading/writing, and sometimes a little to easy for listening.
I'd say it's good for vocab, and hearing maybe ? Some things really sound unnatural.
The only course I can speak of is Japanese (no premium) and it's imho complete ass if it's your only source of knowledge. Only gimmicky sentences and speech elements
The quality depends on the individual(s) developing the training content as well. I don't know if it's changed, but the Korean course used to be quite bad/lazy and had a lot of Konglish and English loanwords, even for words that had an actual Korean equivalent. I think official courses and textbooks, as well as videos and podcasts, are all much better ways of learning than through these flash card apps. A better use case is retention of existing language skills, I think.
Same, it was sad but I'm not gonna use the all anymore due to that decision.
shit's got 80 million ads now. get fucked, ICE owl
Why not uninstall it bro
Exactly why I stopped so using it so quickly.
No mas
Why the fuck is it still installed
I had a streak in the triple digits, just un-installed it. I'll be damned if I'm going to use that AI slop anymore.
6 lessons? ew.
Man I love to see that abusive Owl grovel. I also did this, good on you OP, may they see a consequence for threatening something good for the sake of greed. Eventually nothing is enough for the managers and they burn the whole thing down because of their personal addiction. This harms lives. We need to jail CEOs abusing power this way, that's the actual remedy.
we should give the owl a robot body and let it fly around the boardroom, doing whatever occurs to it from one moment to the next
What is duo doing that's bad with AI?
Generating excercises. Not only is it a way to cut staffing, but now you don't know if the thing you just learned is a real word or phrase or if AI hallucinated it up.
Yeah that's fucking awful. Ugh
The word "hallucinating" for AI spewing falsehoods should be replaced by "bullshitting". Because, in all seriousness, that's what it is - as has been convincingly argued in "ChatGPT is bullshit"
Stfu duolingo