Posted by Jonathan Brind.
The issue is the blue heart. Duolingo has a number of encouragement techniques designed to chivvy on recalcitrant learners, the kids at the back of the class with their feet on the desks.
You can switch off some of these but not blue hearts, which appear to be a sort of video game technique. Appear, but there is more to them than that, a fact I was unaware of when I told Microsoft I was going to stop paying for Duolingo unless I could actually use it. If you don't have blue hearts you can't do the lessons. I could easily get some blue hearts but that would be to engage with the system. Now I am one of the few who actually pay Microsoft for Duolingo and I pay quite a lot, so this refusal to provide service annoys me.
A while ago I looked around to see if I could find an alternative app. There are many that promise to teach you French but none that offer the audio visual techniques I first encountered in a language lab 50 years ago. My guess is that Microsoft has patented these techniques and fiercely defends its erroneous patents, with its massive legal might. The patents are erroneous because you can not patent something that already exists. If the audio visual providers had patents half a century ago, they ran out long ago.
This points to a systemic failure. Capitalism is about the free exchange of goods and services but to make it work it needs a transparent and fair legal system. The fact that the legal system is not fair if it backs companies like Microsoft when they swear black is white, is evident.
This helps explain why we have only one Facebook, one YouTube and one Twitter. It is no coincidence that all these companies are American because they are as much an expression of US legal power as they are of the country's technological brilliance.
For myself, I will try to continue learning French with the aid of Podcasts and French news media. You probably can learn French that way but it is not the same as getting that satisfying 'ping' sound when you finish an exercise.