Duolingo lays off 10% of contract workers, partly due to AI

Comments

• echo64@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The quality of duolingo has gone down massively in the past few years as they have done lay-offs, they don’t even have anyone checking the feedback coming from users any-more.

  the courses themselves are worse too, designed more to stretch out app usage rather than teach more. I used to recommend duolingo as a good starter on learning a language, but it’s just so bad now that I won’t. And it seems to be a direct result of layoffs.

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  • solivine@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah now it repeats the same vocab over and over a bit too long and it’s hard to get much use out of it

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    • madis@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, you always had the option to skip a level.

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  • dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It has become very apparent, even in popular languages. Going to give y’all three examples here:

    • Spanish for English speakers assumes you’re learning North American Spanish, and marks a ton of things as mistakes as a result. On top of that, some of the things it teaches you are just not very correct in general. Yes, people will obviously understand you, but it’s the same as Google Translate saying something without understanding the nuances of what is going on
    • Russian for English speakers. This one was hilarious. I speak it at native level, and decided to do the placement test as a gag. I did not pass it. Half of the exercises were straight up garbage.
    • Japanese for English speakers teaches you practically nothing. It’s repetition and memorization of the same phrases, without any actual learning involved.

    You are way better off using apps like Busuu. You get speaking practice, feedback from the system and other people, and it goes into an okay amount of detail for grammar and vocabulary, for the upcoming exercises. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. For Japanese specifically, just avoid these to begin with. It’s not a good time. Download yourself Renshuu for writing practice, and a copy of Genki for everything else

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  • AmieFromEarth@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Is there any better app you can recommend? I started with babbel in the beginning but after finishing the basic courses it got so dry and boring to use, that i swapped to Duo. Also because a few friends use it.

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    • gramie@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I strongly recommend [Language Transfer ](language transfer.org). The best language course I have ever done, and I have done many (I speak five languages, at varying levels of fluency).

      They have an app, that is simple, streamlined, and very functional.

      The app also has also an Introduction to Music Theory course which people say is very, very good.

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    • BoneALisa@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’ve been using LingoDeer for the past few days since hearing this news, and so far it’s not too bad. The social features are severely lacking compared to Duolingo (my friend group goes hard on the friends quests lol) but they have a lot more grammar explanation and whatnot available that duolingo doesn’t. Plus, LingoDeer seems much less focused on learning for tourism, and more for actual learning.

      Note this is all for the Japanese course, no idea how their other courses are.

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    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Also interested in this

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  • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Duolingo is a steaming pile compared to what it used to be. The nags to pay went up and the quality went down. Their new learning path completely ruined the process for me.

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  • J12@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They’ve gone to complete shit since they’ve become a publicly traded company. Trash updates, removing the forum and comments/discussions on questions.

    Money is priority over education when it’s tradable on the stock market.

    Fuck them, I hope someone creates an AI based language learning app and Duolingo goes out of business. lol at their $215 stock price. It’ll be 1/20 of that in 3 years.

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  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I did the Latin course last year and was unpleasantly surprised by how low quality znd even low quantity it was. Guess I’ll try Babbel next.

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    • aniki@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      babbel is much worse

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  • RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To be fair, it has been a long time of the decline and increased monetization.

    I remember using it at a time where gems had only cosmetic use or you could freeze your streak.

    I did not use it for a couple years and came back to gems being used for a whole lot more, a few free exercises and then it cost gems. Getting the final, I think gold, level of ewch exercise cost like 100 gems a try, no mistakes allowed.

    The only reason I still kept using it was that in the early years I amassey 10000+ gems, so I was slowly using those up. Once that was over I stopped, unusable without paying and even then it does not provide more than vocabulary practise.

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• Olap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  enshitification continues

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  • AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Q: Why do people add “en” in front? Isn’t “shittification” just fine?

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    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      the original author coined it

      en - shit - ify: [commence] + [ordure] + [make]

      I guess because it’s the start of a long and slow process, that holds the context of it not being as shit before. Whereas without the prefix it suggests a more sudden, decisive and completed act.

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    • Olap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/en & en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ification#English both combine to make a word that means to add to something making it shitter

      Shittification would be to make a shit, you could argue that ‘en’ means that you make something else shitter I think

      English is weird en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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• nemam__ime@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It really went to shit when they removed the forum which was one of the most useful parts of the whole app

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• Fisk400@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Whoever owns all these companies that are so keen on replacing everything with AI better invest in defense robots because people are going to have a lot of time on their hand and very little money.

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  • sab@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A lot of people don't have much food on their table
    But they got a lot of forks n' knives
    And they gotta cut somethin'

    • Dylan

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• theedqueen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If anyone has a good app to learn Korean I’d love a rec. at best duo just helps me with vocab.

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  • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Honestly I prefer Babbel over Duolingo. It requires a sub though

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    • quirzle@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Grabbed a year on the Black Friday sale and, holy shit, it's so much better. Actual explanations and lessons is way better than the pointless gamification/leaderboards.

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    • theedqueen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It doesn’t look like they offer Korean. Shame.

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• alienanimals@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Duolingo lays off 10% of contract workers, partly due to greedy executives.

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• casmael@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Any recommendations for language learning that doesn’t involve Duolingo?

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  • Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    librelingo.app

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  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Lingodeer is pretty great. It has a similar free/premium model to Duo, but unlike Duo there is an option to buy premium perpetually rather than as a subscription (and it goes on sale sometimes!)

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  • AccountMaker@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Assimil courses, fsi courses, language transfer, Clozemaster (app), Pimsleur.

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• Lightrider@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  #fuckingcapitalists

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• TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Ficken die eule

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  • shundi82@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Setzen, 6.

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