> Yet on HN people talk about Duolingo as if people would be spending their Duolingo time chatting to Spanish speakers if Duolingo didn't exist. Nah, they'd be doom scrolling.

This observation might be good for Duolingo's stock price, but it doesn't fit reality. Duolingo is not the only way to learn languages online, nor is it known for being effective.

For example, to me Memrise was far superior to Duolingo to expand vocabulary, and pretty much any YouTube series on learning language X is far better than Duolingo. Even browsing newspapers in language X paired with Google Translate is a far more productive experience than grinding on Duolingo.

The only selling point of Duolingo is that it sells you a false sense of progress and provides you a positive feedback loop that keeps you optimizing on local optima that are awfully unproductive.