this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Yea it's become highly enshittified and actively punishes users that don't subscribe. Fuckers.
Can't speak for the entshitification but actively punished unsubscribed users?
I've been using it for two months, learning Germans, I just use Firefox in android instead of the app and I get no ads, only 5 failures but I rarely reach that on a daily basis (I don't want to burnout and I'm pretty sure it's better for learning to not go too fast) and if I ever reach it, I currently have 1k gems. I'm actually surprised at how little use I'd get out of the subscription.
I used Duo pretty solid for two or three years - ended up subscribing to it.
The benefits were negligible - the biggest thing for me was offline play. I used to do a lot of air travel, so the ability to cover a subject or two was super helpful.
The streak freeze was the only other real "bonus" for those who game a shit about it. I started to get quite protective of it when it reached four figures, but I kicked it into touch when I wasn't learning much more than vocabulary. Duo is fantastic for getting a foothold on a language, but it only gets you through the first two or three exchanges of a conversation.
I enjoyed my time with the owl though.
I’ve got a subscription, I share it with my wife and a couple friends.
I like that it keeps me practicing daily, but I’m not really getting better very quickly, it’s just nice to keep French vocabulary in my active memory and it helps using my brain in the morning to wake up.
Yeah, I did a good three-quarters of the French course too. I distinctly remember the lessons about plays and stage work being an absolute bastard, not that I'd ever use it in my line of work.
I've started watching a bit more French media with the French equivalent of "received pronunciation" - such as watching the FR edition of Euronews or France24, plus watching kids shows like Hey Duggee or Paw Patrol is unusually handy, though it does give you some funny looks if you don't already have kids!
Unfortunately, there's no substitute for immersion - even on a short break to Paris, my confidence in using the language shot up from being able to just about converse in the language - but more importantly, getting utterly stuck and failing at something where you have to think a bit faster and get your point across anyway.
I should get back into it really.
You get streak freezes for free now (through quests), relatively often even, I generally get them back in two days if I use both of them in a weekend because I'm busy.
I really considered subscribing until I started using it on Firefox because of the ads, without the ads it's a great free experience imo
Fun fact, if you want to bypass the hearts system you can go to Duolingo For Schools and create a classroom with only yourself in it. There is zero verification.
It affects the desktop and mobile app. I think it might also hide ads but I'm not 100% sure about that, it's been awhile since I've used it.
Sure, the punishment for running out of hearts is they send you to rudimentary prison to repeat disheartening lessons.
I haven't figured out the heart refresh - do they give you 5 new ones each day?
The ads are loud and awful and start before you can mute them. Can only skip the last few seconds. It's engineered to be very obnoxious.
They could just have a value added premium but instead they choose to punish.
But good to hear you have managed to mitigate that. Gives me some hope to stick with it, thx.
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DNS based ad blocking my friend. System wide
It stopped working. They figured out a way around it 😢 Fortunately I found a cracked version of the premium APK so now I get ad free and unlimited hearts without paying a dime (I didn't necessarily care about the unlimited hearts but the ads were fucking obnoxious). I might still look into another system though because they keep reshuffling the format, and I don't feel like I'm progressing.
And I'm not using anything not available to app users, unless you're using IOS but at this point, I think you have others problems to worry about experience wise overall
Gems? I'm out.