this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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I was so upset last year when they got rid of the comment section. There were often helpful explanations for WHY you conjugate the word that way, or how native speakers might use a different word.
I don't know how good this feature was on Duolingo, but there's a site/app called HiNative that does a really good job at this sort of thing.
that looks cool. Thank you for pointing it out!
Yeah, the comment section was amazing...and then they came out with "max", where you get "explain my answer" for a premium, powered by a [notoriously fallible] LLM. This is the definition of enshitification.
One of the languages I am learning is an endangered native language, and it was super helpful to see knowledgeable people in the comments.
That's honestly enraging!? Such data can be greatly valuable for learners, and the native speakers' community, and linguistics.
Yeah but fuck learning, there's money to be made, amirite?
It was an amazing resource. For them just to nuke it completely was very frustrating.
i encountered some people that spoke some MAYAN. would like to learn it, because thier pictographs are interesting.
That's cool as heck.
Literally canceled because of that change. Fuck them.
This "AI first" thing was the last straw for me, but ever since I noticed that the comment section was gone there's been a bad taste in my mouth. I wonder how many of us there are.
I'm pretty frustrated they removed dark mode as well, made it very hard to do a lesson before bed.
Duolingo? Mine still has dark mode. Maybe just for subscriptions?
Don’t worry, you can upgrade to Duolingo Max for even more money and have the AI explain it. (Seriously.)
Yeah, I saw that. I have the family plan (some people in the house go through a lot of hearts (mistakes)) and still have to see ads for Max.
Never used it but that sounds like such a neat concept.
Does anyone know of any free language learning apps that have a comment section? (And a user base that utilizes the comment section, of course.)