Duolingo: Difference between revisions

'''[[wikipedia:Duolingo|Duolingo]]''' is a publicly owned, American language-learning website founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker.<ref>https://press.duolingo.com/#about</ref> On July 28, 2021, the company began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.<ref>https://investors.duolingo.com/news-releases/news-release-details/duolingo-announces-pricing-initial-public-offering</ref> As of Q3 2024, the app has over 37 million daily active users and 8.6 million paid subscribers, with a net income of $23.4 million.<ref>https://investors.duolingo.com/financials</ref>

In January 2023, the data of 2.6 million users was posted to an online hacking forum for $1,500.<ref>https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/scraped-data-of-26-million-duolingo-users-released-on-hacking-forum/</ref> The data was scraped from a vulnerable API, with email addresses, usernames, languages spoken, and real names being included.<ref>https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Duolingo</ref> A spokesperson for Duolingo stressed that "these records were obtained by data scraping public profile information" and "no data breach or hack has occurred".<ref>https://therecord.media/duolingo-investigating-dark-web-post-offering-data-from-2-6-million-accounts</ref>

On March 14, 2023, a new subscription service was released called "Duolingo Max", that promised highly personalized language learning with [[ChatGPT]]-4 integration.<ref>https://blog.duolingo.com/duolingo-max/</ref> In September 2024, a new feature was added to the subscription that allowed users to interact with a character named Lily.<ref>https://blog.duolingo.com/video-call/</ref> This subscription feature would show on the "learning path"<ref>https://blog.duolingo.com/new-duolingo-home-screen-design/</ref> for all users, regardless of their subscription status.

On September 3, 2024, users alleged they could not make a lesson have "legendary" status unless they paid for the "Duolingo Max" subscription to access the video-call lessons.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1f7wlul/how_am_i_supposed_to_legendary/</ref> At the time, the subscription was $30 per month and to get a legendary status for a lesson, each attempt would be 100 gems for free users<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1f7wlul/comment/llbedvt/</ref> (not including Super Duolingo users).<ref>https://blog.duolingo.com/super-duolingo-launch/</ref> Some users were able to fix the behavior, though the "go to legendary" button would still not bring users to a skipped or new level.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1f7wlul/comment/m6uspad/</ref>

According to Duolingo's mission statement, the goal of Duolingo is to make language learning "universally available."<ref>https://investors.duolingo.com/</ref> It states, "We created Duolingo so that everyone could have a chance. Free language education – no hidden fees, no premium content, just free."<ref>https://www.duolingo.com/info</ref> It goes on to say, "We believe true equality is when spending more can't buy you a better education."

Recently, some of the timed learning games inside the app are impossible to complete in the time allowed, even for a native speaker of the language. In order to win, the user needs to pay for a subscription to buy more time. This also means that the learning high scores can essentially be bought.

==Tracking==

The Exodus Privacy project lists as many as 13 tracking, advertising and analytics service libraries being present in the Android version of the app.<ref>https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/de/reports/com.duolingo/latest/</ref> The app does not work for more than about one lesson without internet access, hence turning off internet access is not an option to prevent data exfiltration. The [https://trackercontrol.org/ F-Droid version of Tracker Control] can help with blocking some of the traffic to these services without impacting the functionality of the app.

==References==

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[[Category:Duolingo]]