How badly they want to show me ads, itâs impressive
Duolingo is a toxic ex.
Submitted âšâš3â© âšweeksâ© agoâ© by âšCelloMike@lemmy.worldâ© to âš[deleted]â©
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3c7ee528-5968-465e-ae17-dc30aa115dcd.png
How badly they want to show me ads, itâs impressive
Duolingo is a toxic ex.
never used Duolingo, but i think incan relate now, i had a toxic girlfriend that would talk to me in Portuguese, i donât speak that language
never used Duolingo
i donât speak that language
I believe I may have a solution
Sounds like theyâre threatening to steal your dog or something.
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 Iâve learned so far. đ
The gamification is genuinely so helpful. You can get it through other apps like habitica with some setup. I have ADHD too but I found Duolingo good for habit building but jot the greatest for actual language learning
Yeah i uninstalled
It could be aggressively persistent without sounding like a psycho, too, no? I mean, I have no frame of reference, but I sort of assume that constant reminders would work as well as constant belittling reminders. Maybe Iâm wrong.
DuoLingo replicates all the same patterns as an abusive relationship.
Kinda does wonders to develop habits when you have ADHD.
thatâs 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
âStreaksâ 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
people calling every tactic to keep users more engaged a dark pattern these days is giving me teenagers using therapy speak in wrong ways vibes
I wish the whole streak paradigm was time weighted. Like I got over a 1 year streak on my Apple watch over Covid. Thatâs basically never going to happen again. I wish there was some kind of âthis is your longest streak in the past <time period>â 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 itâs something like duolingo.com/users/{username}
but itâs been a few years
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
I think posting your high score might make people want to top you.
Itâs unfortunate they stopped subbingâŠ
But I am le tired
Iâve 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 itâs a messaging app or something I trust etc., and if it triggers more than three requests its off my phone.
I understand the logic of doing the streak system, keep you engaged by threatening to lose your streak if you donât do it every day, but itâs a double edged sword.
If Iâd lost my streak though⊠I should just go âoh wellâ 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 arenât 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 didnât 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 æŻ, ç¶, èȘ, even äœ 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: ăŻăŻăŻăŻăȘăăăŁăŠăăŸă vs æŻăŻè±ăæăŁăŠăăŸă, both mean âmy mum has a flowerâ but one of them has a string of 㯠you need to decipher the meaning of first before you can understand the sentence, the otherâs meaning can be understood instantly
Thatâs a shame. Duolingo was never great for learning kana, so I guess they thought to use it more in lessons, but they shouldâve 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 theyâre 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, thatâs 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.
if a non shit app would add an âimport streakâ feature (just make me upload a screenshot or type in the number) id switch in a heart beat.
Why is a streak so important?
Soon you can switch to Lingonaut and take your duolingo streak with you: lingonaut.app
Define soon. Their progress per language is around 10%, with the highest completion percentage being Czech at 20%.
Thereâs no way itâll have the language Iâm learning any time soon lol. Duolingo is literally it besides traveling there and talking to locals
Interesting. Is it going to work offline?
Duolingo is not about learning a language. Itâs 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 Iâll bet ok.
Wifeâs streak is at 1,618 days across multiple categories. Almost 4.5 years. I imagine itâs 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 itâs half that or half 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.
Gamification including social aspects if youâre a regular app user.
Abusive ex if you arenât a regular user.
Sense of achievement mainly
Does she actually speak the language sheâs learning?
Having heard very mixed things about Duolingoâs actual usefulness, does your wife speak or write well in any of the languages sheâs 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 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 wonât tell you why you guessed wrong.
Are there better apps these days?
Duolingo isnât in the business to teach you a a language, that would mean you wonât need the app anymore.
Iâve 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.
Thereâs 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 arenât âdesperateâ theyâre targeted specifically to get people to come back and keep learning. They also donât 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 youâll know what it truly means to speak a language.
This is the language equivalent of the âI have a small issue with this software.â - âHave you tried switching your OS to Linux?â conversation lol
Anyone know how to afford moving costs?
Mango Languages is available for free through many libraries and has an app.
At this point Iâm thinking Iâll just take a trip to Tenerife to continue learning Spanish.
Other apps arenât 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 itâs actually been teaching me Dutch instead of just brute force vocabulary memorization.
My only complaint is that itâs really aggressive about asking for you to subscribe. I just close the popups and I havenât ran into anything that I cant do.
Lingodeer for more languages Renshuu for Japanese
Theyâre pathetic but not in a way I like.
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. Itâs so toxic and honestly isnât even that useful for learning. So I uninstalled that shit immediately.
Same, it was sad but Iâm not gonna use the all anymore due to that decision.
Has anyone actually learned any language with duo lingo ?
Why not uninstall it bro
Exactly why I stopped so using it so quickly.
6 lessons? ew.
Why the fuck is it still installed
What is duo doing thatâs bad with AI?
I had a streak in the triple digits, just un-installed it. Iâll be damned if Iâm going to use that AI slop anymore.
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, thatâs the actual remedy.
Stfu duolingo
Swordinferno@lemmy.world âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Why leave the app installed if youâre done using it?
CelloMike@lemmy.world âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Knowing how prone they are to this kind of crap, I wanted to wait and see what itâd say when my streak ran out, I wasnât disappointed
Sneezydinosaur@lemmy.world âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
If you use the duolingo widget you can watch duo drop down a depressive spiral until they eventually die alone in the desert. Itâs my favorite part of the app.