Mastodawn

Luca Ongaro Jan 9, 2024

thermonuclear small claims

From 2015 to 2022, I spent hundreds of hours on Duolingo, translating articles, answering language questions on the forums, and helping to improve the smaller courses by reporting mistakes.

There are thousands of volunteers who donated their labour to Duo: the course creators who wrote their courses, the volunteers who created grammar guides (some smaller languages had an entire second course in the forums), the wiki contributors, the native speakers who answered questions in the sentence discussions.

All of their work made Duolingo the powerhouse it is today. Duo was built by a community who believed in its original mission: language learning should be free and accessible.

Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company. And now that work is being fed into their AI as training data.

Well, I've learned the true lesson of Duolingo: never give a corporation your labour for free. Don't ever trust them, no matter what they say. Eventually greed will consume any good intentions.

#duolingo #languagelearning #enshittification #capitalism

Minnà Pandora Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive I'm so sorry it turned out like this for you... and us "consumers". I'm happy I didn't subscribe long to Super Duolingo.

Lutin Discret Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive this! If only people became aware that's the same for Google Maps, video game mods, etc.

I only contribute to project when the project is legally designed to be a common. Maybe you could find such a project about learning langage? Like, I don't know https://librelingo.app or https://tatoeba.org 🤔

LibreLingo

an experiment to create a community-driven language-learning platform

Poslovitch Jan 8, 2024

@lutindiscret @fullfathomfive Librelingo definitely needs more attention! And I'd love to see them use audio pronunciations by native speakers from @lingualibre 😍

Syd Jan 8, 2024

@lutindiscret @fullfathomfive thank you for sharing. I was hoping someone starts a community driven alternative, which only needs contribution.

Benjamin Eunice Jan 8, 2024

@lutindiscret @fullfathomfive I would absolutely love to start contributing to one of these projects. I think getting a truly FOSS alternative up and running is exceptionally important to do in this moment to offer people a viable alternative to Duolingo. It also could be the objectively better option as it would make it easier to get an implementation up and running for smaller languages such as Choctaw, or rarer dialects of more common languages such as Louisiana French (my second language).

M. J. Page-Lieberman Jan 8, 2024

@beunice I’ve wished for a few years there were a Duolingo course for Kurmanji (the most widely spoken of the Kurdish languages), and there’s a campaign to try to persuade Duolingo to provide one, but alas, such tongues of only a few million using English instructionally would not become priorities for such corporations. Whatever we can do in projects to allow people to collaborate and contribute openly is promising. @lutindiscret @fullfathomfive

Benjamin Eunice Jan 8, 2024

@jotaemei @lutindiscret @fullfathomfive You're hitting the nail on the head. This kind of thing is why we so desperately need an open solution that isn't driven by maximizing shareholder wealth. There are something like 4,000 living languages today, and a tremendous number of them are dying out due to the forces of colonialism, homogenization, and a number of other forces generally perpetuated by those in power. I think the fact that a language like Kurmanji with something like 15 million speakers (from what I can find online) is a difficult pitch to make to Duolingo is indicative that this organization is not worth anyone's time anymore, we need to divest and re-focus attention on sustainable projects.

Purple Jan 9, 2024

@jotaemei @beunice @lutindiscret @fullfathomfive At the same time you can "learn" Klingon with Duolingo. Klingon is a fictional language...

M. J. Page-Lieberman Jan 9, 2024

@PurpleShadow Yeah, I knew someone who was involved in the development or lobbying for that. @beunice @lutindiscret @fullfathomfive

Hartmut Goebel Jan 10, 2024

> I would absolutely love to start contributing to one of these projects.

So go for it. Why are you lingering?

@beunice @lutindiscret @fullfathomfive

LBeaudoux Jan 8, 2024

@[email protected] @fullfathomfive Tatoeba is a great platform for language learners. You can search for words to find sentences that use them, and curate your own lists of sentences for later review.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatoeba

Tatoeba - Wikipedia

Sky Leite Jan 8, 2024

@lutindiscret This is completely different from video game modding. Modding is making changes to something you own. The company might benefit from it indirectly, but it's an entirely different situation from submitting your free labor to the company's cloud or whatever, which is the case for Duolingo

cwicseolfor (has moved!)Jan 10, 2024

@sky @lutindiscret Unfortunately, we don't own our games, we own *a revocable license to play them*. Technically we haven't seen that license be revoked yet, but given the tax-writeoff destruction of films and series in other media and rampant stupidity in the top ranks of media biz *coughunitycough* I am anticipating the day is coming. (At that point I suspect a mighty arr-matey shall be heard from ten thousand voices across the land, but it still has tremendous potential as a chilling effect.)

Sky Leite Jan 10, 2024

@cwicseolfor Yeah, I can kind of see the original point from that perspective, but video games are interesting because we do own them at the end of the day regardless of what the law say. If I have the files delivered to my computer and the company suddenly decides to do some hideous thing after indirectly profiting from a mod, there are still entirely valid ways of acquiring and playing it that don't involve giving money to them.

I imagine this is one of the reasons streaming is a hot topic

cwicseolfor (has moved!)Jan 10, 2024

@sky Huge fan of physical media for this reason. Remember the Playstation commercial where they poked at MS by stating that there was a procedure to lend a game to a friend, and they demonstrated handing a game case between two people? I miss those days.

Oh, hey, found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video

YouTube

Sherri W (SyntaxSeed)Jan 10, 2024

@sky @lutindiscret If you check the TOS for many games you'll find that you no longer "own" them, but rather have a licence to a copy for your use. Sometimes they even contain a killswitch that can delete or disable a game on your machine when they want or a mandatory external call to a server to validate the game & when that server is taken down, the game stops working.

Also many have a clause that any mods created for the game *can* be taken & used by the devs without credit or payment. 😓

Sky Leite Jan 10, 2024

@syntaxseed I'm aware, but at the end of the day the game is running on your own device, so with enough effort there's really nothing to be done on their part. The fact that what we own is a "license" is really just capitalist drivel to make people scared of the fact that if a file is distributed to you, you own it at the very least for personal use.

Of course there's nuance in this (consoles, for example, which tend to be super locked down), but I think the point still stands.

Sky Leite Jan 10, 2024

@syntaxseed I feel like it's important to mention that actually enforcing this comes with work. If someone's game stops working due to bullshit reasons like that, I think it's the responsibility of tech-minded people to help them get around whatever DRM is causing it.

Sherri W (SyntaxSeed)Jan 10, 2024

@sky I agree!

Lutin Discret Jan 11, 2024

@syntaxseed @sky just today: https://mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux/111733304268294139

It's always the same. Video games should be FLOSS. There a some/not enought #FLOSgames with modding communities where you can contribute without getting screwed. FLOS empower people to be creative giving them the right to do so. By playig, modding proprietary game: you can only have fun while corporate interest allows you to: think about MMO that got their servers shutdown while player wanted to continue playing. FLOS prevent that too

Sky Leite Jan 11, 2024

@lutindiscret The very post you linked disagrees with you https://mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux/111733440930919835

Lutin Discret Jan 17, 2024

@sky and yet, I'm here, playing https://www.hedgewars.org while the Worms 2 CD I bought decades ago gathers dust in my closet. I hope you will get open source clones of your favorite games too so you can enjoy those in upcoming decades and share them with the future generations 👍

Hedgewars

Hedgewars! It's a blast!

Sky Leite Jan 17, 2024

@lutindiscret I don't "get" open source clones of my favorite games. I make them. That's not the part we disagree on.

Sherri W (SyntaxSeed)Jan 11, 2024

@lutindiscret @sky I don't agree. As someone who's created & contributed to many FOSS software products... it's a community full of people going unpaid for their labour.

It would be nice though, if games were added to some type of Trust whereby players could continue to legally enjoy them if the company goes out of business or discontinues them.

elpolacodesplegado Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive

You may as well pay for a project that hires people for wages they can live off of.

demiromantic_flag

@lutindiscret @fullfathomfive
I sent a few corrections to Google Maps, and I always move its messages to my "Commercial" folder. I always remember myself that any help I give to Google is free, while it's a company that has a huge profit, and I don't like this difference.

Regarding maps, I do prefer to put my efforts and time on Openstreetmap, where I did hundreds of updates and inclusions.

Thibaultmol 🌈Jan 10, 2024

@lutindiscret
are these still being improved? because both seem stagnent in development....

EDIT: tatoeba still has users adding things, but the actual platform isn't evolving anymore?
@fullfathomfive

Jason Bowen 🇺🇦Jan 10, 2024

@lutindiscret @fullfathomfive I wasn't aware of either. I'll check them out!

I hated that the comments/discussion got taken away. Those were a very useful resource when "correct" responses didn't quite make sense.

Kellyann Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive I was already mad at how much worse Duolingo's become lately, but this is downright enraging.

AJ Collins Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive sorry to hear 😔

Tushar Chauhan Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive As far as startups go, duolingo sounds like a home run. A successful business built on crowd-sourcing, deception, and greed. What's not to like.

thermonuclear small claims Jan 8, 2024

@tchauhan And they started it all with a National Science Foundation grant and publicly-funded research. What a con.

https://new.nsf.gov/science-matters/nsf-gave-duolingo-its-wings

NSF gave Duolingo its wings!

NSF - National Science Foundation

Tushar Chauhan Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive Didn't know that. Makes it even more disgusting :( Appropriation and theft of the commons (public funding and public labour) for the personal gains of shareholders.

13 barn owls in a trenchcoat Jan 8, 2024

@tchauhan a devastatingly dry burn, thank you

Mastodon Migration Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive

Money quote: "Eventually greed will consume any good intentions."

Dodgy Theories Jan 8, 2024

@mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive

Not always. We have Wikipedia and Mozilla. And many other charities that feed people etc.

Dodgy Theories Jan 8, 2024

@mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive

And we have Mastodon..... all the mastodon servers run by volunteers...

Jarf Jan 8, 2024

@dodgytheories @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive encourage you to look at the recent uproar over Mozilla’s executive salaries as well as its business plan which did not mention Firefox

Dodgy Theories Jan 9, 2024

@jarf @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive

I suspect a very selective reading of their "business plan".

Is there a URL I an look at?

Thanks

Jarf Jan 10, 2024

@dodgytheories @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive a casual search for "Mozilla CEO report" would yield a ton of results in your search engine of choice, or here on the fediverse. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time: https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/the-fall-of-firefox-mozillas-once-popular-web-browser-slides-into-irrelevance/

The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance

With its market share hitting a new low, can Firefox rise from the ashes or is this the end?

ZDNET

Jarf Jan 10, 2024

@dodgytheories @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/mozilla_in_2024_ai_privacy/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/

Mozilla CEO pockets a packet, asks biz to pick up pace the 'Mozilla way'

Which is all about privacy and encryption, apparently

The Register

Dodgy Theories Jan 10, 2024

@jarf @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive

Thanks.

Yes $6 million is a lot of money for running a non profit..... too much really.

But I would much prefer Mozilla to exist rather than not exist. At least FireFox is a viable alternative to Chrome etc....

Which browser do you use then?

Jarf Jan 10, 2024

@dodgytheories @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive I would prefer Mozilla exist, and get a massive amount of criticism for its CEO salary so it stops paying them that salary. I would also like them to keep making Firefox, and have it be a priority.

I use Firefox and have for a decade. It's up to the users to pressure them to stop leaning into "AI" and this obscene salary structure. Especially given they are laying off non-executive staff.

Dodgy Theories Jan 10, 2024

@jarf @mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive

The reason I ask for a link is so that we are "on the same page". So thanks for the link.

And providing links strengthens your argument. There are is a lot of drive by misinformation on the internet.

Phil M0OFX Jan 8, 2024

@mastodonmigration @fullfathomfive And if greed doesn't do it, chasing metrics will.

Dodgy Theories Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive

https://www.languageguide.org

"Language Guide is a 501(c) non-profit organization."

Learn a Language - Share a Language - LanguageGuide.org

Avi Rappoport (avirr)Jan 8, 2024

@dodgytheories @fullfathomfive That’s very nice!

Жером "Mithriel" Дармонт 🇺🇦Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive Dealing with a company? Need a contract.

Jon Awbrey Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive

Slavery Is The Original Form Of Capitalism
And It Always Everywhere Reverts To Type

Silversalty Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive
I recently ended my pay level at Duo basically because it's recent changes seemed counter to learning the language. The second major change I've seen that had that characteristic. I kept thinking whenever I had a problem, why isn't there some popup to clarify/refresh? Now, w/o pay level, learning seemed intentionally blocked.

Hearts!!?

Fin Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive thing is, I already had the idea that duolingo wasn't the best source for learning a language anyways, and really just a big help towards the right direction, nothing more.

was a big fan until now, now i just don't know anymore... i don't trust ai to ever be good at anything, and I don't trust a company who would lay off people for some shitty autocorrect to replace them...

penciledpage Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive

I'm so sorry to read this. It sucks to have your good work misused.

I used Duolingo for several years, and enjoyed so many aspects of it. I deleted the app several months ago because the ads I was seeing set off alarm bells. They were so accurately targeting me that I suspected my privacy was being violated through the microphone or in some other way that I couldn't identify.

Stewart Russell Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive This enshittification might explain Welsh Duolingo's near-legendary obsession with parsnips

Martha Jan 9, 2024

@scruss @fullfathomfive
Nah, we Welsh learners just love our parsnips. They going to discontinue this course anyway. I've been at it for a year and plan to complete the year then quit. It's become - not fun - in too many ways.

David Nash Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive Eh-yup.

I started exploring Duolingo in 2017 to brush up on some rusty Spanish and also just take a look at some other languages quite cheaply (both in time and in money). It was actually useful for both of those, so long as I kept up with reading and listening to actual Spanish (if at a fairly introductory level) from other sources.

If you were using Duolingo at about that time, you probably remember how the "choose a language" screen showed an interesting cultural artifact from the part of the world that the language was widely spoken in. For example, French got the Eiffel Tower, German the Brandenburg Gate, English the Statue of Liberty (ok, fine, it's an American company), and a whole bunch of ones for less-widely-spoken languages that I had fun looking up online to figure out what they were.

These went away after another year or two, when they started going for simpler, more cartoony graphics.

That should have been a warning sign.

Because, soon, everything else worthwhile started to go away as well, while even more gamified junk showed up. I was already largely ignoring things by 2021 or so. The last straw for me was when they axed the forums in 2022 -- if you haven't seen the forums, you may not realize just how valuable they were for detailed discussion about each language in general, not just clearing up confusion about tricky sentences that showed up.

So I am not surprised they have jumped full speed into AI nonsense and continued to throw away whatever else was good about them.

Charlie. Probably.Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive Never give anything to "anthropomorphised equity." (I wish I could remember where I first found that epithet.)

Conversely: nothing feels as gratifying as helping another HUMAN BEING.

Charlie. Probably.Jan 8, 2024

The challenge of the moment is this: how do we tell the difference?

David - Forking Mad Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive awful. I will be letting my subscription lapse when it is up for annual renewal

migrated Ariadne Jan 8, 2024

@fullfathomfive What other app should I use if I want to learn a language?

Patrizia Jan 8, 2024

@Ariadne @fullfathomfive Anki (https://www.ankisrs.net) is a really good flashcard program that can have shown dialog and images as part of the cards. It won't suffice as the only thing you need to learn a language, but it's very helpful.

Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards

Anki - a program which makes remembering things easy.