I absolutely loath the “write something for the Community to review” aspect. There should 100% be a way to turn that off.

And make my profile completely private. I don’t want anyone else to be able to see my progress or even know that I’m using the app at all.

I tried them out years ago. I had taken a bit of German in high school and liked it so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I didn’t love the gamification aspect. That’s something that applies to a LOT of modern software. I always hated gold stars and stickers as a child in school. I hated the stupid programs my various employers had to encourage coworkers to compliment each other - it’s all a tactic to generate positive emotions and avoid paying people more. And most of all, I saw the rise of mobile games and micro-transactions and skinner boxes. The way some people just go nuts and put hours into games they otherwise wouldn’t just to get some digital “trophy” or “achievement”. Duolingo had a decent amount of that.

I stopped because of privacy concerns. I forget the details now, but I think maybe they were found to be harvesting a lot of data from phones that they were not disclosing. Either that or they pushed out a mandatory terms and conditions update that just said they would be harvesting all of the data? So I uninstalled.

I watched my girlfriend use it last year and it’s so much worse. They have leaned so heavily into “dailies” and “streaks”. It’s like the shittiest mmorpg you’ve ever seen.

I recently started Busuu, and while it feels BETTER it still has a lot of the same stuff. A lot of encouragement to engage in, like, social and community aspects. To get streaks. Idk maybe I would be better off just finding books or something.