never give a corporation your labour for free.
People should have known this from the beginning.
These volunteers didn’t think about it in these terms.
They gave away their work for free to help people learn languages, and for a long time Duolingo seemed like the best platform for that.Starting your own platform is much more difficult than contributing to an existing one that seems to be operated with some amount of goodwill…
Poor computer literacy is really biting people in the ass. Quotes like this really stand out to me:
Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company.
Did you not know that they would be able to do this from the start? Or perhaps you knew and were just being extremely naïve? Either way, not being aware of what kinds of control other parties have when you share data with them is something that’s all too common these days. I really wish people would consider the ramifications of what companies can do when you give information like this to them.
Like giving your phone number away for no reason. The moment you share it, you give companies all they need to start spamming the shit out of you (or giving it away to other companies that will happily do it instead). How is a concept like this so hard to understand?
It’s not that they didn’t know that they could. It’s that they didn’t think they would.
Because—and I say this as a user of Duolingo who first started using it after the old comments were made read-only, but before they were removed entirely—it’s fucking insane that they did. Those comments were so useful to the user. I don’t know how many times I went to them to have some aspect of the lesson explained to me because the app itself doesn’t actually do any real “teaching”, it just tells you that you got it wrong and what the right answer is. The comments from users helped explain the nuance in word meaning, or the relevant grammar rule, helping add enormous value. By removing them they are literally making their product worse for no gain.
People thinking that they’d act rationally wouldn’t expect that.
I understand that. Unfortunately, though, one has to expect always the worst from Corps, no matter how “good” they appear to be at the beginning.
That’s right, never trust a private company that might go public in the future.
That’s why you should build your communities on Discord instead. 🤡
That shit is the most infuriating thing ever to me. It seems like so many technical discussions and communities are going to Discord now where that information is not indexed or preserved. How many issues have I had where the answer was sitting on a Discord server that will never appear in any general search result?
I’m all in on Matrix. After hearing the words, “Nobody uses IRC anymore, everyone uses Discord now”, I knew we were in trouble.
And here I am just pissed that Duolingo keeps overhauling their whole program. Like, in less than 2 years time, they’ve had 3 different versions of the website and of course it wipes out all of your progress and approximates where you may be in their new system. Except the latest. The latest update just wipes all your shit out and says “good luck fuckface!” I’ve become less and less a fan of Duo over the last 4 years and yeah, not gonna do the AI thing with it anymore. Sari can go on vacation with my one-eyed dog named Max and eat cheese sandwiches for all I care.
I’m still mad I bought the super duo costume which they then completely removed from the app
Yeah, very annoying to be told a word is “new” when I know it well, and vice-versa be expected to have done whole lessons on other words that I’ve never seen before. That said, not many options for Hungarian, I’ve only seen Drops as an alternative daily app.
I saw one interview with the CEO on Reddit and deleted the app. The guy is an absolute nonce.
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.
The gems aren’t as predatory as they seem.
It’s a for-profit company. The monthly subscriptions are so that the company makes money. The subscription gives you some extra features and removes ads. Seems pretty reasonable.
As for the gems, that’s part of the gamification. You get gems just from doing lessons. You can spend gems on cosmetic things or on buying a “streak freeze” that lets you avoid losing your “learn every day” streak if you forget or otherwise can’t use the app one day. Maybe you can buy gems too, I don’t know, but they don’t seem that awful. They’re just nudges to try to keep using the app every day, and if your goal is to learn a language that’s a good thing, right?
IMO gamification is good. Learning a language can be boring, especially when it comes to grammar lessons. Making it more entertaining means you’re more likely to want to do it, so you’re more likely to achieve your goal of learning another language.
Having said that, there is definitely enshittification going on. It used to be that the most of the program was available to people without a subscription, and only a few things were “paywalled”. Now only the main path of the main course is not paywalled. It used to be that if you got bored with the lessons you were doing, you had alternative things you could do. Even the main lesson plan used to have optional paths. Now, unless you’re subscribed the only two options are “stories” or the next lesson in the chain.
lol learning a new language needs gems. Jesus fucking christ
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I never thought the capitalists would steal my means of production!
Anyone who has a passion for open source and wants to learn Spanish should check out LibreLingo! It’s also a nice project for people who want to contribute to something that is not owned by a company, though it’s a bit too early for contributors who have language skills but no coding experience.
Just vote with your dollar, unethical companies always lose market competition ☝️🤓
I think you forgot the /s , because real life shows that unethical companies rarely lose market competition. See pretty much every oil company, facebook, microsoft, amazon…
I’ve literally put “☝️🤓” in the end though… Can’t get more sarcastic than that
Guess I’m too old, I wasn’t aware that emoji combo also acted as a sarcasm warning
No worries!☝️🤓 usually signifies a pick-me idiot who thinks they’re the smartest in the room, it’s usually used sarcastically to present a common but idiotic opinion. Emoji combination shows them at the moment of going “Uhm, akshually!!”
is there a non-shitty alternative to use that anyone could recommend? would be really interested.
I started looking for alternatives when they added the weird character voices and I started noticing inaccurate pronunciation of kanji in my Japanese course. A lot of people on the message boards recommended Memrise, and it’s been great! The official courses contain actual video and audio of native speakers, so I knew for a fact the pronunciation would be correct—even better than the old Duo voices!
There’s also user-generated content, too, some of which might not be accurate, but most of the user courses I’ve found are pretty good. You can even make your own set and publish it.
(I haven’t visited the site in a few months, so I can’t guarantee it’ll be exactly as I found it, but I doubt it has changed much)
And depending on what languages you’re studying, you might be able to find some good ones dedicated to your language if you do some digging. For Spanish, I used SpanishDict, and for Japanese, I used Kanshudo (both are freemium, with more restrictions than Memrise)
New life lesson: never volunteer for a for-profit company.
People who keep trying to do Socialism in a Capitalist system are doomed to fail, because Socialism produces enormous surpluses and Capitalists love to just gobble that shit up.
“If peoples basic needs were met nobody would work!”
People “work” all the time of their own accord, we just call it volunteering instead of “work.” People love saying “I don’t want to work,” but really what they mean is “I don’t want my economic output stolen from me by my employer while what’s left is stolen by ever increasing prices with no wage adjustment to compensate.”
People “work” all the time of their own accord, we just call it volunteering instead of “work.”
Never even mind volunteering. $50B/year in wage theft in this country. People contract to do labor and then their bosses simply short them. Back in 2019 a coal company attempted to close a mine without paying over $1M in back wages. The workers shut down the rail out of the money and seized the coal until they were made whole.
Wish more folks who got fleeced by DuoLingo had the gumption to do something similar.
It’s harder to protest and make demands when most volunteers don’t even know where the fuck Duolingo’s HQ is, much mess live anywhere near it.
Agitate on the forums. Let other people know about open-source alternatives. Organize other power users to submit bad data in protest.
I would argue the traditional family structure is a micro-socialism state.
That depends heavily on how the family operates.
Historically speaking, the male head-of-household had dictatorial control over the ownership and expenditures within the household. Only in the last two generations have western women gained the right to hold down jobs and assume credit for large purchases, to own their own homes, and to take full custody of their children. The idea of emancipated minors, civil rights for children, and labor protections for young people are even newer. And there are plenty of reactionary political attitudes in the country that would see these reforms rolled back.
A family certainly can operate in a socialist capacity, when productive property and its surplus is shared equitably. But there are plenty of instances in which the head-of-house is functionally no different than a landlord, demanding the rest of the family live contribute surplus labor while existing in relative poverty.
Why would you give away your production value to a capitalist for free?
It’s literally the only power you hold in the labour market, and it’s your own fault if you give it away for nothing.
not everyone started as an epic lemmy leftist
I just wish there were foss alternatives to Duolingo
They exist, but they often lack the front end polish and they never get the kind of publicity enjoyed by their for-profit peers.
10,000 sentences and OpenWords are others to consider.
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