this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
        
      
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      Privacy
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I would recommend moving off of Duolingo if you can. What you move to depends on the language you're learning. They fired a bunch of their language developers and went hard on AI.
I help run a community for Welsh learners and we're finding more and more people coming in with questions about a Duolingo lesson where things are wrong and weird. Plus their business practices aren't great. They realized that they make money from you staying on the app, not learning a language, so your progress is artificial stunted. Plus the complete lack of grammar explanation at all we're finding hurts people more than helps
As a general recommendation, textbooks are so much better.
I also see Gmail. I don't have a recommendation for a replacement as I'm doing my research on it now, but getting away from Google is a good idea
I recently tried duo lingo. I have a pretty strong background in Spanish, but want to brush up. It became apparent very quickly that the app is not about learning so much as keeping you in it. The lessons don't make a ton of sense, and after not using app for a week, it demoted me to just 8 words that you would learn in your first class (hombre, el, agua, tu, etc.). There is no way to skip ahead.
I've already replaced Gmail (I just can't disable it and I need for my school) with Tuta. In addition, I was forced to install Duolingo because of my Spanish teacher (at least it was with a fake email address).
You can acess your gmail account with thunderbird
Can verify, it's super easy to do and I nuked the Gmail app from my phone afterwards.
Look into formal complaints procedures.