Full transcript of “Why Everyone is Cancelling Their Duolingo Right Now”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 We are watching the live downfall of Duolingo. You're about to see the downfall of Duallingingo in real time. You're watching the live downfall of Duolingo. Everyone's calling for the mass unfollowing of Duolingo. Dolingo used to be one of the most trivially polarizing companies in Silicon Valley thanks to their sassy owl mascot Duo and his hot takes on every pop culture moment. But now Dolingo is in the hot seat and Duo can't take the heat. We've successfully bullied them off the internet. All their videos are gone. Just like that, Dolingo went from Silicon Valley meme king to Elon level villain practically overnight. But what actually happened? Is the company doomed or are they just ahead of their time? Even if you've never used Dolingo, you
0:46 probably know the brand, or at least the bird. Duo isn't just a mascot. He's a cultural icon. Part coach, part troll, part threat. He's like an unhinged version of Microsoft's Clippy, helping you navigate your language learning journey. For years, Duo was the soul of the brand. But as the company leaned hard into AI, aka replacing human workers with AI, something changed. The lessons got worse, the features sucked more, and the vibes got colder. And even the most dedicated users felt betrayed enough to forfeit their yearslong streaks. Despite being a Dualingo girly for over 5 years, I will be deleting my account and my app. It wasn't always this way, though. And to understand the
1:32 company's fall, we have to look at the rise. Dolingo didn't start from nothing. Its founder, Luis Bonan, was the creator of Capta and Recapture, tools that are supposed to help websites verify that you're actually human. But in reality, capture was just a tool used to help train AI. But understanding Capta's mission and what it eventually became tells us a lot about Dolingo's business strategy. Let me explain. Capture was supposed to stop bots. But in reality, it was training AI using unpaid human labor. You'd type in distorted words or select traffic lights to prove that you were human to get those ERA store tickets or the latest Nike drop. But
2:17 behind the scenes, you were helping AI learn how to see. Louise sold this tech to Google in 2009. And two years later, he founded Dolingo with the same core idea. Make users do valuable work for free. Dolingo's original business model was to find customers who needed stuff translated. For example, a French university wants to translate historical documents into English. Dolingo would then get users who were learning English on the app to translate French passages into English. They turned language learners into unpaid translators. Companies would pay to get stuff translated and users would put in the work to learn another language for free. It wasn't that successful. And Louise hated the idea of ads, subscriptions,
3:02 and inapp purchases. But as investors, not so much. And soon Louise succumbed to the pressure. In 2015, they added ads to the app. Then in 2017, they introduced Dolingo Plus, a $10 per month subscription that removes ads and adds a few new features. In 2022, they got rid of Plus and rebranded it as Super Duolingo and bumped up the price to $13 a month for all the same features. Join millions of super learners progressing faster with features like no ads and unlimited hearts. And in 2023, they introduced an even higher tier, Duolingo Max. So original Max includes new AI features like explain my answer and role
3:49 play where you basically talk to Chat GBT for $30 a month. All the benefits of Super Dolingo, plus new features powered by artificial intelligence. Each step in the pricing ladder drove higher revenues, even if it meant deviating away from its core mission of bringing free language education to the world. That Max update was pretty controversial, and we'll come back to it later. But I want to talk about how Duolingo actually grew into the behemoth that it is today. And it's not because it's great at teaching a language. Duo is one of the most recognizable corporate mascots out there. and he's a core part of Dolingo's acquisition and retention strategy. Dolingo had early initial success, but according to their
4:36 former head of product, Jorge Mazle, by 2018, daily active users on the app was slowing despite being the top downloaded education app in the world. Among things like introducing a leaderboard and gamifying the app experience even more, Dolingo brought their mascot to life by essentially turning him into Microsoft's Clippy. Duo the Owl now reminds you to do your lessons and the app icon changes Duo's look. Continue your streak and Duo becomes a rising phoenix. Don't launch the app in a month and Duo melts away. It scolded you to keep going and it guilt tripped you for not continuing like your not so subtle tiger mom. Jorge said that the streak feature is one of Dolingo's most powerful engagement mechanics. But Dolingo didn't stop
5:22 there. The reason why most people know what Dolingo is today is probably because of a Tik Tok video. What are you? An idiot sandwich. Idiot sandwich. What? An idiot sandwich. And that's all thanks to Zarya Parveves, Dolingo's global social media manager. She pitched the idea of Duo being a creator himself. And in 2021, Dolingo's Tik Tok was revamped to focus on trendjacking. Duo would hop on online trends, create funny and edgy content, and spell the doom of those trends, all while gaining millions of views and followers. [Music] And this strat was wildly successful,
6:09 turning Dolingo into a household brand. Today, they boast 130 million monthly active users. They bring in over $700 million in revenue and they have 17 million Tik Tok followers. For a while, Duo was beloved by Dolingo users and non-users alike. But the table started to turn when Dolingo made a decision that even the most dedicated fans couldn't stand behind. Remember when Dolingo rolled out that $30 a month plan called Dolingo Max? The one with the built-in AI tutors? Yeah, that wasn't just a new feature. That was the start of a full-blown identity shift. Not long after this roll out, Dualingo got rid of 10% of their lesson
6:54 writing contractors, replacing them with AI generated content reviewed by a skeleton crew of humans. And soon after, users started noticing something was off. misgendered words, nonsensical sentence structure, role-play chats spitting out robotic or culturally insensitive responses, and lessons that were just outright wrong. Now, to be fair, Duolingo had mistakes before AI. But back then, users could go into the community forums to report errors, read explanations, and crowdsource help. Except Dolingo shut those forums down in 2022, right before the AI roll out. And people didn't like that. And maybe, just maybe, to distract us from the shift, in
7:40 February of this year, Dolingo pulled off a bizarre stunt. They announced that Duo the Owl was dead. [Music] They sent users to a website telling them to work on their lessons to bring Duo back. And it worked. The campaign went viral. Dolingo got people to use the app on mass and Duo was resurrected. I guess you could say I put the fun in funeral. So yeah, please just do your lesson because next time it won't be a fake death. But for a lot of users, the whole thing felt disingenuous. Despite all this, the company continued to double down. In April, Louise sent out an email out to all employees saying that they're now an AI first company. He
8:27 claimed that this would help them get closer to their mission. To teach well, we need to create a massive amount of content and doing that manually doesn't scale. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP. Chop chop worker bees. AI slop is exactly what people want. And not surprisingly, this didn't go over well with either employees or users. A month later, Louise backtracks. I'm making the man who caused this mess accountable for his behavior. I'm demanding answers from the CEO, Luis Vaughn an I know you're upset. I know people are upset. I want to make this right and I'll answer any questions you may have. But the message was clear. AI is the future, even if it meant throwing
9:13 quality, nuance, and jobs out the window. And Dolingo has been facing criticism ever since. As a speech language pathologist, I know that language learning needs the human component. But regardless of the backlash, it doesn't matter if it teaches you what you want to learn, right? So, let's say you're okay with the AI, the layoffs, and the weird cybertruck owl. You don't care about the drama. Dolingo is a language learning tool, and you're here to learn. Well, that's where things get more gray. Let's start with the biggest misconception about Dolingo. It's not really designed to teach you a language. It's designed to make you feel like you're learning one. And I'm not
9:59 just being petty. Many teachers, linguists, and former users have pointed this out for years. Yes, you'll learn some vocab. Yes, you'll memorize some phrases. But will you actually be able to have a real conversation in that language? Unlikely. Even Louise has admitted Dolingo's ceiling. At most, it gets users to an intermediate level. Enough to get by, but far from fluent. But Dolingo is fun, right? Well, it is more like a game than a classroom. There's XP, leaderboards, streaks, badges, gems. It definitely feels more like Subway Surfers than Rosetta Stone. And that's intentional. Louise has said that a significant portion of their
10:44 users use Dolingo because it's fun and not a complete waste of time. It's kind of like your Steam library, full of games you intend to play but never do, except Steam doesn't guilt trip you for not opening that copy of Powerwashing Simulator. It's not that these features are bad. In fact, they're really good for app engagement. But if your goal is language fluency, not so much. Duolingo's biggest flaw might be that it confuses memorization with communication. You can drill in words like 50 times and still trip up when you need to ask where the bathroom is. I'll say it again, Dexter. Why? Because the app doesn't really
11:29 teach you context, cultural nuance, or how to think in another language. It just teaches you how to tap the right answer. Even Lwick from video games explains this very clearly. Because the issue with Dualingo is they do their job so well that you forget why you even wanted to learn a language in the first place. I caught myself at 11:57 opening the app to go to the section because I knew the section was the fastest section cuz I could just do this at completing my daily learning session. And I put this in heavy quotations. A 365day streak doesn't necessarily mean that you've learned the language. It just
12:15 means that you open the app every day. It's like getting a Planet Fitness membership, driving to the gym, walking in to go pee, and going home. Technically, you went to the gym, but are you actually getting the benefits of exercise? And as we've seen with users reporting that lessons are not only worse, but also wrong? Can Dolingo really be called a language learning tool? Dolingo users and the internet have heavily criticized the company's recent moves, but investors have been loving it. Duolingo stock is currently trading at all-time highs, and the company is worth seven times what it was worth just 2 years prior. Daily active users grew 50% year-over-year. Paid subscriptions
13:01 are up 40% and revenue is also up 40%. While we see all these headlines about saving money with AI, Dolingo is actually spending more money this year than it did last year on expenses. R&D expenses are up 40%. Sales and marketing expenses are up 30%. So all that AI talk about cutting costs, yeah, Dolingo is actually spending more than ever. If the product is getting worse, but the stock is mooning, what does that say about the real business model here? So, is all of this criticism against Dolingo unwarranted? Because from the outside, the company looks like it's thriving. The education landscape is changing. Whether we like it or not,
13:47 Dolingo might just be early to the AI edtech game. But here's the problem. If the lessons are wrong and the platform isn't designed to actually help you learn, is it really education? Going back to Lewig, he memorized the phrase with ChachiBT, used it with full confidence in Japan, and only confused the locals. Oh, yeah. What guy orders in perfect Japanese? Perfect Japanese. This is like me whipping out like Latin like to say thank you. I give you my utmost thanks for your assistance in this endeavor. And that's the issue.
14:32 People can't report lessons as wrong if they don't even know they're wrong. Because ultimately, Duolingo isn't in the business of education. It's in the business of engagement. It only matters that you think you're learning long enough to watch an ad. Buy Super Dolingo or Dolingo Max or Max Dolingo Supreme Plus TM. But the more they chase this model, the further they drift from their original mission to make the best education and make it accessible to all. And when 90% of Duolingo's daily active user growth comes from word of mouth, they're gambling with their most valuable asset, social trust. Only time will tell if users continue to drop
15:19 their streaks and drop the app entirely. If you found this interesting, subscribe for more and tell me what weird phrase Dolingo taught you. Thanks for watching.
