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"There are thousands of volunteers who donated their labour to Duo... Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company." (aus.social)

submitted 11 months ago by Star@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] sanpo@sopuli.xyz 239 points 11 months ago (3 children)

These volunteers didn't think about it in these terms.
They gave away their work for free to help people learn languages, and for a long time Duolingo seemed like the best platform for that.

Starting your own platform is much more difficult than contributing to an existing one that seems to be operated with some amount of goodwill...

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 45 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I understand that. Unfortunately, though, one has to expect always the worst from Corps, no matter how "good" they appear to be at the beginning.

[–] PHLAK@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

If we always assumed the worst no one would buy/accomplish anything. This is not a realistic way to live. The best we can expect to do is making the best decision with the information we have at hand at the time. Of course a healthy dose of scepticism isn't a bad thing either as long as it doesn't get in the way of living a relatively normal life.

[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Poor computer literacy is really biting people in the ass. Quotes like this really stand out to me:

Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company.

Did you not know that they would be able to do this from the start? Or perhaps you knew and were just being extremely naïve? Either way, not being aware of what kinds of control other parties have when you share data with them is something that's all too common these days. I really wish people would consider the ramifications of what companies can do when you give information like this to them.

Like giving your phone number away for no reason. The moment you share it, you give companies all they need to start spamming the shit out of you (or giving it away to other companies that will happily do it instead). How is a concept like this so hard to understand?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 11 months ago

It's not that they didn't know that they could. It's that they didn't think they would.

Because—and I say this as a user of Duolingo who first started using it after the old comments were made read-only, but before they were removed entirely—it's fucking insane that they did. Those comments were so useful to the user. I don't know how many times I went to them to have some aspect of the lesson explained to me because the app itself doesn't actually do any real "teaching", it just tells you that you got it wrong and what the right answer is. The comments from users helped explain the nuance in word meaning, or the relevant grammar rule, helping add enormous value. By removing them they are literally making their product worse for no gain.

People thinking that they'd act rationally wouldn't expect that.