Comment by smcin

14 hours ago

Yes I've been chronicling the enshittification of Duolingo here for several years (below). But unlike Github/CoreAI, DuoLingo is tied to a single (and imperilled) revenue-stream from a single product, plus they had a 7/2021 IPO in the heady days of Covid, so they started out in a subscriber market awash with cash. Also like other sites with a formerly vibrant community and forums, they rug-pulled the way they extracted value from the user community's posts then copyright-washed it through AI, then turned around and tried to remarket it back to said users ('Duolingo Max = Super Duolingo + features like AI-powered "Explain My Answer" and "Roleplay" options for more advanced practice'). While laying off thousands of their contractors and translators.