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this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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In another thread someone told me you can buy gems or something to keep your streak going.
That would've made me uninstall long before his comments.
I'm a long time user of Duolingo and you earn plenty to give yourself the occasional streak freeze if you can't go two days without doing a lesson. It's not really as predatory as it sounds. It's nothing like pay to win type games.
Fuck Duolingo for the AI shit though, don't mistake me for a Duolingo simp thinking their blameless. It's just that the monetization is not as predatory as it sounds.
I have so many could probably keep a streak foing indefinitely without ever doing a lesson, but I'd need to log in every couple days to repurchase the streak freeze.
Nobody has ever learned a language by using Duolingo anyways. It's an app that lets you pretend your are doing something useful with your life instead of just slaving away at your job enriching others.
I have definitely learned a lot of Spanish from Duolingo, and while I'm not fluent, i went from being able to count to able to hold some basic conversations with Spanish people i know.
You're just pretending you are doing something useful with your life instead of just slaving away at your job enriching others.
/s, obviously. What a wild take they have.
You had me to the /s, NGL
Jesus fucking Christ, lighten up lol.
the realest comment on lemmy, ever
Ah, okay, thanks for the info! I've never used Duolingo so I genuinely don't know.
"Freezing" your streak is just silly, even if they offer it for free. Is this just for online clout, so you can brag (falsely) to others how long you haven't broken a streak?
If an alcoholic goes 10 years without drinking, then has a beer, the streak is broken. Doesn't mean you can't recover and improve, but it is what it is. It's dishonest to pretend it didn't happen, especially if you're comparing yourself to others...
Really comparing missing a day of a language learning app to alcoholism recovery?
Your streak doesn't go up on days you use a freeze.
No? It was a comparison of the streak, not the subject of the streak. That was just an example. My point remains. Unless you can literally stop time, the streak died. It's okay that it did, but why pretend it didn't?
If you can't see why someone might have a different criteria for a streak in days without alcohol as a recovering addict and days in usage of a learning application I can't help you.
Theres also basically zero server side-checking on anything. Hacked APKs let you get premium features for free :3
That's awful! Could you please let me know where these APKs are hosted so that I may avoid them?
Mobilism.
Got any recommendations for where to find said APKs?
Just a guess , but maybe the extra net by the bay of torrent.
Mobilism.
I remember easily getting gems for free. Also the streak basically doesn't matter at all. What made me uninstall is the slow pace. It felt like I was stuck on the same words and topics forever. It felt like I was not actually learning anything, which if you've ever started learning a language if a formal setting, is very apparent.
The old tree system was much better, it allowed you to mix exercises from different topics. The new path system locks you into one topic until you know all the sentences by rote.
They changed that a couple years ago, right? I think that was when I quit.
It's worse than that.
Yes, you can pay for a streak freeze. If you don't, you'll probably find that you were given one for free anyhow. You'd have wasted your gems.
Yes, you can pay to undo a streak loss. It's more than paying for a freeze.
It'll give you multiple chances to pay for all that, too. If you're out for days and then come back, you can pay to fix your streak.
What is the point of a streak if you can just buy your way back to it?
Also, I had paid for the last couple years, which (IIRC) includes free streak freezes. It still asked if I want to pay for them. I'd say no, and find I had one anyhow, or a friend had miraculously given me one.
But during the last year (365 days) my streak was actually only at 190 or so because I'd used so many streak freezes that I got for free. I wasn't even trying to keep my streak.
When I finally let my streak die, the icon started trying to guilt trip me into coming back with horrible icons of Duo being sad, heartbroken, or even dead.
The constant mental manipulation that was well beyond what gamification should ever be was what finally drove me to just quit playing altogether. I had already canceled my sub long ago, but I'm not even going to use the remainder of this year I've already paid for.