In case you needed one more reason to leave this app

Update: 1/31/25: Please sign our petition to demand Duolingo take action and hire more customer service employees to support Duolingo customers: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/duolingo-fix-customer-support-now

It brings me no joy to make this decision, but it has become necessary. For too long, Duolingo has treated this subreddit as free labor—data mining our discussions, using us as an unpaid customer support desk, and ignoring real user concerns. That ends today.

Effective immediately:

1. All posts asking for help with Duolingo account issues, bug reports, billing problems, or technical glitches will be removed.

2. r/Duolingo is no longer providing unpaid customer support for Duolingo.

⚠️ This does NOT apply to general complaints about Duolingo’s lack of customer service. Those discussions are still welcome.

If you do not receive a response or assistance from Duolingo and you're a paying customer, I encourage you to cancel your subscription.

Why This Change?

1. Duolingo has made it clear they do not care about fixing their broken support system. Despite being a $16B company, they have only two regular, full-time support staff (plus some freelancers)—leaving millions of users without proper help. We refuse to be their backup. The CEO of Duolingo has been it clear to me that they will not be hiring more staff, and they will focus more on AI and automation to fix the problem. AI can't even properly count how many Rs are in the word strawberry, but whatever.

2. Our moderators are not customer service representatives. We have received countless heartbreaking messages from users who lost streaks due to hospitalizations, suicide attempts, billing issues that went unresolved, and even users sharing their real names and contact information and even more personal stories about how Duolingo failed them in critical moments. While we empathize, it is not fair to expect unpaid volunteers to carry this emotional burden.

3. Duolingo has access to this subreddit’s complaints—they just choose not to act. Instead of fixing customer support, they use AI to monitor r/Duolingo while ignoring real user concerns. If they refuse to listen, we refuse to keep doing their job for them.

What’s Changing?

1. We will be closing our FAQ page and removing posts that provided solutions to common Duolingo issues.

2. Any new posts asking for tech support, billing issues, or bug reports will be automatically removed.

3. Duolingo users needing help must contact Duolingo.

This community is for discussing language learning—not for doing Duolingo’s job for them. If Duolingo refuses to support its own users, we will not do it for them.

🔗 Read more about what's going on here.

Thank you for understanding.

I just wanted to share my family's Duolingo-themed Halloween costumes this year! Every year we do a big group costume, and this year my son (who has a pretty good Spanish streak going, along with my husband and myself) suggested characters from the app! They were a lot of fun to put together from mostly thrift store finds, felt, and a lot of hot glue.

Why can’t they make some logical word problems? It is one thing telling someone buys a 1920 watermelons, it is achievable atleast but this is outrages.

Duolingo occasionally prompts you to invite a friend to start a friend streak, which is pretty innocent. But my friend passed away just over 70 days ago, and duolingo keeps prompting me to start a streak with her. She's my only friend on duolingo and it's really just a painful reminder that she's gone every time it pops up.

Not to mention it has this horrid notification saying "Emma's been gone for a while now" and asks me to get her back on the app. Like, at some point, i feel like we should be able to turn prompts like that off. A simple "don't ask me again" button. It's just like pouring salt in an open wound anytime either of those show up.

I know Duo really wants to lean into this and I get it’s meant to be funny, but I just watched my mom lose almost everything in her house, including her beloved dog. I’m sorry, I know I’m just not handling this well, but still…

I was searching for another app on Google today and this was Duo's little statement. The "no premium content" is how they initially started but now that statement is laughibly false. The entire time I'm on the app, I'm bombarded with ads and animations to upgrade to paid premium content.

Hey guys, I have a bit of a strange question. My mate Nik passed away around a week ago. In that time Duolingo has given us a friend quest and asked me to nudge him a few times.

I don’t want to remove him as a friend, but is there a way I can get them to not do this anymore

Thanks for any and all advice

https://chng.it/fkSjLNjy9k

https://www.instagram.com/hearts.before.energy

The new Energy system does nothing but hinder the learning of free users in favour of pushing a subscription in the face of learners. I have created a petition to advocate for a change back to hearts. Please join me if you are tired of this nonsense!

I press dismiss but it keeps reminding me.

Duolingo devs would rather spend money on quirky marketing gimmicks, than actually improving their Japanese course past beginner level material...