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"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." (aus.social)

submitted 10 months ago by Star@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes, how dare you contribute to a community effort.

Wait, isn't the post you just made doing just that?

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You missed the word "capitalist"

If it's a for profit organization then ask for a salary or don't help them.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Has shitjust.works paid you for your commentary here? If they decide to become a for profit company in 14 years, are they going to pay you back salary? What about all those people that ever posted to reddit? Is the world a better place if they never did it? Does reddit owe each of them a salary?

Sometimes you contribute to something because it makes the world a little better place.

Maybe now that we've seen it done and people know how to contribute, we could make a free and open version of duolingo.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

There's a difference between participating the way most users do (using the service) and participating the way this post is talking about (keeping the service running). Funny you should use Reddit as an example considering how pissed the admins were when they finally realized they were doing slave labor for a bunch rich tech guys.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 10 months ago

I'm not doing this to make the world a better place, God damn it.

I'm here because I want to feel validated about my opinions!

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't aware that Lemmy is a for-profit enterprise.

Plus, my getting use out of a product and simply by doing so helping the company make money (say by increasing engagement or such), is extremely different to somebody going out of their way to produce work for that company in a way that doesn't directly benefit the producer at all.

Put another way - Am I helping keep my local supermarket in business simply by shopping there? Sure. Would I offer my free time to help clean their store?

Hell. No.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

In 2009 Duolingo was originally funded by the NSF. Their motto was free education will change the world.

In the 14 years since, they became something else. All those crowd sourced comments from a good upstanding project require the project and it's data not to become evil.