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>

According to the privacy policy, if a Duolingo Max user utilizes artificial-intelligence (AI) features, a copy of their text or audio data will be shared with vendors such as [[OpenAI]].<ref>https://www.duolingo.com/privacy</ref> This is also similar for non-AI features, as Duolingo "may also collect and analyze your speech to help [it] understand the effectiveness of [its] lessons and to improve the product," though the data is anonymized.  

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.

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."