you bet you better finally decide

[lauradi7dw]

I have spoken before about disliking Duolingo's AI-ification (and treatment of workers). The time to renew my paid subscription came up and I let it go. Now I have to watch ads for other games (or at least let them stream), endure frequent reminders that things would be better if I started paying again, and store up "energy" before they let me play. I'm used to ads in other contexts, but this makes it nearly unusable. The level of self-referential obnoxiousness ("we have made this very unpleasant. We know it. We are holding your time hostage") is startling to me. I would like to see stats on how many people just entirely quit.
It's a publicly traded company. Do the stockholders ever try a free account to see what the experience is like?

Comments

[sovay]

I'm used to ads in other contexts, but this makes it nearly unusable. The level of self-referential obnoxiousness ("we have made this very unpleasant. We know it. We are holding your time hostage") is startling to me.

Yecch. I hope it loses them customers rather than gains them revenue.

[lauradi7dw]

I use free youtube, which means subjecting myself to ads. It is often the case than one can skip after only a few seconds. How many ads I get from youtube also seems to depend on time of day and subject matter, or recency, or something.
I give money to The MarySue but I don't ever log in, so I am bombarded by popup ads. In that case, the text of the article is still there. It feels like dodging around the ads to see it, but I don't have to wait.
The irritation with Duolingo is that the ads are fairly long and don't offer a skip option. At least they are very specific to users - thus far, they have been either a LONG ad for some brightly colored game (presumably an acknowledgement that duolingo is a game in and of itself) or ads from Duo for the paid version. I have never used Spotify but gather that many people dropped them because there were recruiting ads for ICE (do I have that right?).

[sabotabby]

I quit it over AI-fication and treatment of workers. It was the last of my phone games to be deleted. I just can't with that shit anymore, even if it means I don't learn Spanish.