Tell HN: Duolingo (NYSE: DUOL) disrepects your privacy and dislikes questions
This is mostly just annoying and might be considered 'typical growth hacking', but also constitutes a privacy risk: your 'friends' are notified whenever you are online, have completed a number of lessons, or whatever. The Duolingo privacy policy (https://store.duolingo.com/pages/privacy-policy) is obviously a cut-and-paste job (for a NYSE-listed-company, really?) that doesn't address concerns like this at all.
In the Duolingo app, you get notifications like 'your friends congratulated you on 14 days of being online' and, more worryingly, 'XXX congratulated you on completing 10 lessons today'. Nevermind that you don't know who XXX is, and can't do anything about notifications about your online state being sent to them. Even if you have removed XXX as a 'friend' from your in-app Duolingo profile aeons ago.
So, there is a 'privacy' option in the Duolingo app. This apparently (again, pretty much without notification, much less consent) requests a ZIP export of all your data (FYI: I'm in the EU, US experiences may differ). Which takes up to 30 days (Sure, ZIP is not the most efficient file format, but that slow?)
But, at least there is an email address: privacy@duolingo.com (pretty much the only contact details you'll get as a fully paid up Duolingo customer). Sending a very polite email reply to the minders of this account about the continuous harassment by 'friends', however, is a mistake.
You will not receive a reply, but your paid Duolingo account will be disabled pretty much immediately. Leaving you, I guess, to sort things out with Google/Apple/your credit card company.
'Typical growth hacking'... Oh, joy...