• kautau@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      That’s what happens when you have some of the best user experience people and engineers in the world specifically designing for addiction. Facebook is no different, but their most successful demographic is. My grandma is hopelessly addicted to scrolling FB reels and my fiancé is hopelessly addicted to scrolling IG stories. Different target demographic, same goals

  • missingno@fedia.io
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    8 hours ago

    If you want to learn a language, Duolingo is pretty much the worst way to do so. Seek out community-created resources for your target language.

    • twistypencil@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I did both the Spanish and French trees completely, I do think I learned some things along the way, and some of it stuck. Every language learning method is not perfect, you need to immerse with multiple things. I was living in country, doing duolingo, listening to pimsleur, listening to radio in language, going to classes and hanging out with native speakers, and my fluency still is not great. It takes years of being a child before you get anywhere and no system is going to solve it alone

        • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          That’s fair. Though I do think there’s some irony in wanting to learn a new language only to avoid communicating with people who use it (though I do also understand the utility of knowing a language isn’t exclusive to talking directly to people).

  • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    All the women in my office said everyone is moving to Lemonade. They said, “why would we move to another Chinese app? That’s dumb.”

    No idea who owns Lemonade but it was interesting to me that they were not interested at all in Rednote.

  • protist@mander.xyz
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    10 hours ago

    A 216% increase sounds impressive, but probably isn’t because the starting number is very small.

    • Lowpast@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Except Duolingo regularly releases these numbers. In July 2024 it was reported to be slightly above 9m monthly chinese learners…

      So quite significant rise.

          • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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            7 hours ago

            That makes more sense. I’d be interested to know the absolute increase in the number of learners in the USA but I guess the point remains that the ban caused some kind of uptick. As someone who’s been learning Mandarin off and on for many years I can only say good luck to them.

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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    9 hours ago

    i knew that damn owl was going to get involved in corporate lobbying at some point

      • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Honestly I had that app on my phone for 3 months before I actually started using so I feel you there. It’s not that bad to start off with and it starts super slow. And fuck streaks and notifications and all that shit I just do it when I’m bored instead of scrolling and refreshing pages on my social media of choice.

        • Thrawne@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          I am using it to learn French. I also appreciate the lesson structure as it relates to available time. I use it on breaks, or in the morning before i start work. I hope, once i finish the duolingo course work, i can get some tutoring to really learn it. I agree it is a beneficial use of time, as opposed to social media.