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.
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.
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.
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.
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.