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.

"Streaks" are shitty dark patterns IMO.

Fuck. I dunno what to do with this

Edit: just cancelled my subscription to super Duolingo. Fuck them

One notification like this and your app immediately gets notification permission revoked on my phone (if not uninstalled).

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.

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.

Duolingo is not about learning a language. It's about giving you the illusion of learning a language.

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?

There’s 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 aren’t “desperate” they’re targeted specifically to get people to come back and keep learning. They also don’t 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.

https://youtu.be/9KqrnBiyBQ8

Anyone have a good Duolingo alternative?

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.