Is this person a fake/Bot or a gambler?

[lord]

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She gets almost only 40/80 XP. In a very short time, for example 39 seconds, mostly cca 90 seconds. She does lessons only rarely, most of the time she does only some exercises or what and gets 40/80 xp. Only to see her own name at the first place on Sunday?? Is this not waste of time?

How can I do one tast in 39 seconds if I dont use a script? To start a lesson takes a few seconds, then do the lessons and in the end wait for upload.

Thanks

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[buho]

here's me doing it under 1 minute:

(36s)

proof.png (62.14 KiB) Viewed 2461 times

(49s)

proof~1.png (61.25 KiB) Viewed 2461 times

had I done these practice lessons with double xp boost, I'd have gotten 80xp under 1 minute
In 15 minutes(one double xp boost), you can score 700-800xp easily.

so, it's not fake. but it isn't best way to learn either.

[lord]

im not a plus user, so i cant get double xp for this type of exercise. so she spends one hour or more daily only to get fast 2000 xp in one hour just only to be the first. she learns nothing of course this way. and this happens almost every week. there are so many such people. i think duolingo should close the leagues because it is not ethical, it supports gambling. Or do such people feel happy if they do this to other users who dont have Plus?
So the more I learn the more time that lady wastes because of me.

[Corinnebelle]

I am wondering what you mean by "gambling"?

[John Little]

Want to bet?

[buho]

so she spends one hour or more daily only to get fast 2000 xp in one hour just only to be the first. she learns nothing of course this way. and this happens almost every week.

I agree that this isn't a good way to learn a language.

i think duolingo should close the leagues because it is not ethical, it supports gambling.

they won't. if anything, they'd (and they are) gamify it even more. Because that keeps users hooked. and that in turn gives Duolingo revenue(by ads), and data(which can then be sold, or used internally for all purposes).

Or do such people feel happy if they do this to other users who dont have Plus?
So the more I learn the more time that lady wastes because of me.

I don't think so. I've seen my friends really getting into this gotta get XP frenzy a lot as being on top of the league gives them that dopamine hit. I don't think she's purposefully doing it to make others feel bad.

as a final suggestion, don't worry too much about going up or down in leagues. remember why you're on Duolingo.
XPs and medals won't mean anything if you can't converse well.

[lord]

I am wondering what you mean by "gambling"?

when somebody is on duolingo not to learn but to collect xps the easiest way (for expample practicing the first diamond levels with double xp, or the brief 40XP challenges that plus users have) to be at the first place on sunday.

[lord]

She finally failed! Because of the time change.
She didnt notice that after the time change at sunday night the league ends now one hour earlier. She made a distance (or margin??) from me of a few hundreds XP and left. So later in the evening I was doing my lessons silently without overtaking her because I assumed that after overtaking she will receive message about it and then she will make another easy fast exercises to be the first again. Shortly before 9pm I overtook her from my mobile phone and after only a few seconds she got online and straight away she sent another xps. But I also sent straigt away another xps from the almost finished lesson which I prepared in my tablet and was waiting with the uploading of the results till the league end. And then the league ended and I was the first again
She didnt do anything more that day. And this week is completely different. She makes less XPs in total from monday till today than in only one single day of last week.

[lord]

another week with another lady. Her streak is almost 2000. But what is interesting is that she does every day the same. At least in last 15 days (I cant see more history at this site). She does only the first few diamond crown repetitions in turkish and swedish with double xp. Every day.

[Deleted User 3754]

.

[Enzfj2]

Look at the raw data of the top name of the 'Crowns Hall of Fame': each separate line looks quite normal, like some 2-3 minutes from the previous one, but!
It goes round the clock, without any significant breaks, from 2022-11-13 17:06 until now (2022-11-14 14:09), with some breaks from Nov. 2 to 13, and then back non-stop as far as raw data are available (2022-11-02 00:40—2022-10-31 06:15)
The only way I can imagine is that's a team of several people under the same account, but the reason of such behaviour is far out of my comprehension.

[FurbyZeKat]

She finally failed! Because of the time change.
She didnt notice [...] makes less XPs in total from monday till today than in only one single day of last week.

I fully understand what you feel. My advice is to make your profile private and forget about leagues. You're wasting your time.

[Corinnebelle]

[mention]Enzfj2[/mention] A team of people trying to win a place in a league? I wonder if they are doing it for that, or if there is a situation where there is only one device but multiple people who want to use that device and instead of having separate accounts they use one account?

[Enzfj2]

@Enzfj2 A team of people trying to win a place in a league? I wonder if they are doing it for that, or if there is a situation where there is only one device but multiple people who want to use that device and instead of having separate accounts they use one account?

Some lessons were done just in a few seconds, some even in 0 (zero), so it cannot be a single device.

[lord]

maybe a few browser windows with a robot script

[Jaggleberry]

I've been wondering if some people are developing scripts or training AI using DuoLingo. I've seen people in my league getting 18,000+ xp per day, which I figured was either multiple people or someone training an AI or something.

[Katarina0472]

My boyfriend and I are both on two separate emerald leagues…. And we currently have a “Fernanda” in 1st place on both our leaderboards who mysteriously show up while we are both doing matching to catch up. This “Fernanda” added 100 XP in just under a minute to stay ahead of me, clearly baiting me to a competition. I didn’t take the bait. Clearly a bot planted by Duolingo.. Shame on Duolingo for doing that. Sucked the joy out of the app.

[PtolemysXX]

Clearly a bot planted by Duolingo.

This may be real people, someone may just find it funny to tease you... When you hang around for longer in the Duolingo world you will find all sorts of strange behaviors in the leagues. The higher you go the weirder it will become. Leagues are something special that should not be taken seriously if you take language learning seriously

[Katarina0472]

A real person in two separate leagues with the same name and very similar avatar that are 600 and 2000 XPs ahead of the second place person? That’s really sad.

[PtolemysXX]

You may try to look up these users in both leagues to try to find it if it is indeed the same account. The name that you see in the leagues is not their ID and you may see some popular names quite frequently even within the same league. Also, many avatars looks almost the same these days - they can be picked from a limited number of options (I think...). Every user has a unique ID though that will be displayed in their profile.

In any case if you suspect cheating you can report abuse on the Duolingo site: make screenshots of the two leagues' dashboard and attach to your report. Duolingo used to react quickly to league abuse. They do not need that trouble.

[cah2o]

Instead of being addicted to being in the leagues why not be addicted to what you came to Duolingo to do...learn a language. You are being sidetracked. Go private and get rid of the stress.

Duolingo is only encouraging you to stay online in the app/website longer.

STOP!!! Wake up!!! you are on Duolingo to learn a language.

Duolingo is not the same. It's Duolingo Max (super is a lite version). There were human volunteers creating content now there is AI.

Take a minute, reflect, and smell some roses!

I got caught up too! Then I noticed that the double XP were stackable. Instead of 15 minutes you could get up to an hour of double XP or maybe more!

I hope that I'm not offending anyone ... but seriously, this can and will affect your health.

[Katarina0472]

I honestly don’t pay attention to the XP. I just noticed it for the first time yesterday and Fernanda’s behavior caught my eye. It was a good chuckle. But then when my boyfriend had the same Fernanda I just rolled my eyes. No idea if they had different user names. Avatar was exact. Thats all I know.. and why is FERNANDA learning Spanish anyway? Like seriously? Reeks of a deployed duolingo bot to bait and get people to buy gems with real money. Disappointed in people. I’m on there to learn. Not compete. If only there was a block option.

[PtolemysXX]

If only there was a block option.

you can block a user or report them if you click on their profile and then select the desired option.
Neither action will remove them from your league though. If you report the user and Duolingo confirms the irregular behavior they may lock their account - if it happens long enough before the deadline you have a chance to pass that suspended user.

and why is FERNANDA learning Spanish anyway?

It is hard to say who Fernanda really is and if it is her/his real name. Some users give themselves a name in their target language. Some may sign up for a course in their native language to actually learn the other language in the pair. There are many possibilities.

[gmads]

Just a few observations, based on my own experience.

The teaching method of dl is based on two things: presenting pairs of sentences, and repetition. When I used to work via the web browser, I had blocked most of the distracting elements of the page, which included the leagues block. Regarding repetition, some years ago users had the option to repeat both lessons from specific units and random general lessons. I used to use these two options quite a lot. In general terms, my learning strategy was to advance one, two or three lessons, depending on the content (vocabulary tended to be easy, but grammar not as much), and then I used to spend several days just doing repetition.

On my cellphone, well, I use the app, thus, I have to live with all the distracting elements Owing to this, I took notice of the leagues and well, I started to compete. However, since my goal is to learn, I keep following my strategy as usual, that is, I do my lesson, and then start to repeat until I feel I have grasped the new vocabulary or characters from the scripts I might be learning (e.g. Arabic). For me, competing is just an extra fun way to do the repeating of my lessons. Since I started I have ended first place at each league, until I arrived at the diamond one, where at that first week someone did 20K points in a few hours; obviously I did not try to kill myself trying to reach her. The goal is to learn.

So, it is not an incompatible either-I-learn-or-I-compete situation. No. Whether competing is detrimental or not to one's learning, depends on one's own approach to it.

By the way, for those eager to compete (and learn at the same time), and wishing to get the most points for the time and effort done (without being subscribed to duo plus), there are many different ways to manage the various resources available, specially when learning three or four languages at a time. Doing 80 XP in a minute or minute and a half is not something particularly difficult to do. I can do 2K in a relatively short period. The most I've made is like 8K in a day.

Regarding learning… to think that by just doing duolingo one will actually learn a language, well, as other participants have expressed elsewhere, that leaves a lot to be desired. Of course, there are some courses that are very complete with a large number of units. Those will certainly provide a good starting point once finished. For example, the English–Italian course is one of them. However, even in these cases, one should always use other resources: web pages, videos, podcasts, books and audiobooks &c. If one does dl along with all the resources available, at the end one will have great platform to work with.