@emmatonkin @cfiesler Duolingo has always been an A/B testing hellscape. I don’t think it would be unfair to call it the service’s core principle, to try to discover the most effective way to teach languages by treating the user base as a large test group. It has always been contentious. For one thing, there’s a built in disregard for disability, which didn’t seem to conflict with the values of the organization enough to do more about it than acknowledge that it’s unfortunate. ..Thanks. You too.

I don’t think there’s any malice in this. I think it’s a result of tunnel vision driven by idealism, to make a free learning service that works better than the often very expensive existing ones, using the kinds of hooks a video game might have to help people stay engaged. It’s a noble goal, and I do think it probably has made a positive contribution to the state of the specific category of language learning products to which it belongs.

But their simplistic “data speaks loudest” approach to deciding how best to teach human communication of all things is entirely absurd. They cannot measure learning. They hope that it’s a necessary byproduct of what they do measure, but their absolute focus on numbers makes learning that doesn’t create better numbers undesirable. They actively discourage learners from taking their time with lessons in favor of advancing further at a faster pace. I strongly suspect that they have managed to transform the pop up tips from a helpful option that allows some needed flexibility into a way to ensure that people will continue to advance well past the limits of the vocabulary and grammar they actually know. It’s not that it can’t or doesn’t teach anything at all, but it does profoundly undermine itself.

Ethical questions aside, the anger and frustration has been there the whole time. I think everyone wants it to work and to be good. My guess is that the amount and depth of the dismay is probably not just about this change, or even just the test group thing, so much as it’s about a long history of disregarding user feedback in favor of data while not actually being able to deliver on the promise of more effective language learning. The belief that you can disregard disabled people in order to serve the average person better is just one symptom of a much larger misunderstanding of people and learning, and I think it really shows in how it feels to use Duolingo. It’s not surprising that users would be mad about another disruptive change that doesn’t address the most serious problem at all.