Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Create App Content

Re:Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Cr... by gretch on Monday January 08, 2024 @05:15PM (#38919017)

I’ve used duolingo several times on and off throughout my life for different languages (Spanish, German, French). Sometimes paid, sometimes free.

In the beginning I thought it was excellent and that’s why I kept coming back.

I tried it again the last 12 months and the app wasted so much of my time making me skip through promotions and do-nothing animations. Opening chests, collecting gems, all the gamified stuff.

I didn’t need it. I was already self motivated to learn without a bunch of time sinking doodads that you have to click through.

I guess duolingo is good if you are struggling with motivation.

Recently I used a paid app called Pimsleur that I liked. There’s also a lot of good free resources on YT

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Re:Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Cr... by bdamm on Monday January 08, 2024 @05:46PM (#38919446)

Your point is a good one, although I have to point out that Duolingo does at least let you skip through the gamified stuff very quickly. When I'm doing lessons I reflexively double tap the "Ok" button to skip over the little whoo-hoo animation.

It would be awful if I was forced to wait for the animation to complete, which fortunately, they do not. The same applies to basically all the animations except for the opening screen.

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