Duolingo formerly had conversational language lessons, which were 100% audio (not even able to see text on screen). These were phenomenal for actually learning to speak <language>, compared to the generated garbage in the lessons.
Duolingo formerly had lessons that explain new concepts, like a particular verb tense. It doesn't seem to have any of them once changing over the to completely linear lesson tree.
I believe that Duolingo has fallen into a logical trap. They can easily track app engagement. It is known that regular practice is the key to learning a language, but they incorrectly forget the quality of the interactions. I've got my Duolingo 800 day streak still kicking, but I've learned almost nothing with the changes over the last year or so. I'm not terribly sure why I even use the app anymore, as there are plenty of anki decks with the same quality content. (The only thing I'd lose is the speech recognition, but that's so laughably bad that it reinforces incorrect pronunciation.)
Why have vanity badges, or other kinds of gamification, to begin with? Because it gives users an added incentive, through an added reward, a goal, which helps them get through something that could otherwise be too tedious or un-fun for them to endure.
And if everybody agrees that the added goal aligns with the user's actual goal, that's a great strategy.
But you get what you reward, because people like to get rewards. The dopamine rush of knowing you'll reach the goal.
If the rewards stop helping users towards their real goals, and you've trained them to work towards your goals already, you'll get people doing daily tasks to get daily rewards that they shouldn't really care about. But they do. Because you made them care.
And you might have replaced their intrinsic motivation, wanting to learn a language, with an extrinsic goal, wanting to get a reward. And if they then stop caring about the extrinsic goal, they just might stop entirely.
Messing with people's motivations is dangerous, and "driving engagement" is the absolutely most useless reason to do so.
If you use the app regularly (as you "should" if you're learning a language), you will absolutely certainly get the badge. Well, that is, until recently, because some of the quests can be difficult to accomplish. No longer is it just a nice consistent monthly thumbs-up in the form of a fun little badge, it's now a source of uncertainty and perhaps even a source of anxiety for people who are driven by "collecting" (e.g. "achievement hunters"). Sure sounds like enshittification to me, regardless of how big a deal it is.
Completely false.
A vanity badge that's based on some effort, has a value equal to the effort required. Unlike increasing requirements for core functionality where you have increased effort for the same reward, increasing requirements for an effort-based vanity item increases its value in exact proportion to the effort.
Completely false
Effort has no direct relationship to value in anything. See job wages for a few billion examples. There are high paying jobs that require little cumulative effort and little on-going effort. There are low paying jobs that require high cumulative effort and high on-going effort.
If they have a different opinion that's fine too. Discussion shouldn't have a first mover advantage.
Rule 34 needs a twin:
Anything can be useful.
Therefore, anything can be enshittified. And will be.
Period dot period. QED. I have spoken.
But you don't know that the aggregate user base feels that way. In fact, it might actually be much better for learners, like the top comment says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36611749
The person I replied to talked about 1 person getting angry about the change, but that doesn't mean it is bad for everyone and is not evidence of enshittification based on data.
But if their assessment of the badge change is correct, then it is a valid case of enshittification.