"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."
"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."
fullfathomfive (@fullfathomfive@aus.social)
People should have known this from the beginning.
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...
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.
Poor computer literacy is really biting people in the ass. Quotes like this really stand out to me:
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?
but what if they give you cool digital gems
Yeah, that's an offer a man can't refuse.
woo, shiny. my preciousss
Seriously. I don't know what outcome people expected. Duolingo is not a non-profit, or a community project like Anki. I hope everybody who is surprised by this is receptive to the lesson.
While it is true that corporations are terrible and will do anything in the name of profit, what you guys are saying is “they got fucked and it’s their fault.” It’s not like corporations are some animal who can’t help but be who they are. They are formed by people who choose to fuck other people over for their own benefit. Fuck off with your victim blaming.
Why do you believe non profits are immune to this? They're still incentivized to produce value. Maybe we just don't mock volunteers for doing a good thing and instead shame the people taking advantage of them?
Same for people contributing to google maps
Or Instagram, Facebook, reddit.... Lemmy. I guess Lemmy isn't a company so we have that going but if it's not your own instance you are technically doing work for someone else.