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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

A point for irony, NGL. ⬆️

It depends on the language tbh. Several languages on duolingo are decent ways to dip your toes in the water for language learning, I've heard good things about the Spanish, German, and Mandarin courses. But it's really dependent on the language, I tried Duolingo's Irish course and it was so bad that I'm still trying to unlearn a good amount of misinformation, really soured language learning for me even though I eventually got a good course elsewhere.

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

Ew but then I have to talk to actual people

/s

For most people, the personal consequences of China being able to spy on them are nonexistent. The government that can actually abuse such power against them, e.g. prosecute them for out of state abortions, is the US.

So protesting the US banning an app and trying to force people to use their own spyware social media makes some level of sense.

It's still obviously better to use privacy preserving and/or federated services, but that's not something most people know about or understand.

Half the population thought the US government was trying to kill them with a vaccine and a face mask while they coughed themselves to death.

You're absolutely right, people are fucking stupid.

I literally had a friend breaking down over it and I suggested Fediverse alternatives and they looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head.

I even explained that US companies aren't doing anything materially different than Tiktok (propaganda and spying on people), and they're all bad. Still looking at me like I'm some kind of maniac.

Everyone bitches about corporations but so few want to actually stop sucking on their fucking teat.

Maybe they were only in it for the propaganda?

I do love that some of the "refugees" (lol) are just moving to an even more Chinese app though. I don’t think it’s all that many but the propaganda pointing toward propaganda is hilarious.

Honestlyyyyy and yet when I speak about actually ethical alternatives, ppl then be like nah cba, too difficult, too much effort or too complicated when it only takes five mins or less to make an account and yet these same god damn ppl expect you to always listen to them.

We honestly truly live in a society.

People only want to make a difference if it only gives them good social points, not actual change or things that enable for them to actually think critically and change their viewpoints.

Feels pretty hopeless tbh esp as this is only the beginning of 2025 as well but hey at least there’s some logical people on here (though you do get the occasional dumbass on lemmy/mbin)

Lemon8 is owned by the same company as TikTok, they're literally trading one Chinese app for another anyways.

If you want to drop that bombshell at the office LMAO

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

So quite significant rise.