A bunch of these are also utter bullshit. "Purchase history" sounds like they can go through and read your Amazon purchases or something - they can't. Diagnostic data sounds scary, but I'd rather use an app collecting diagnostic data because the alternative is a buggy mess. Them tracking what you do in their app is way more help than it is dangerous. Stuff like device ids and such are also likely only pulled for that reason or to confirm your purchases with them, etc.

So on point! It's in these moments that I wish there was a pinning feature

I can't figure out who does more scare tactic advertising - conservative politicians or VPN companies. I swear all of them want you to believe that Russia and China are watching you personally

The visualization is also horrible. Why the hell aren't the dots aligned with the words?

Bruh. I want to start punching puppies who made this

if these apps could actually teach you a language, you'd eventually get proficient enough at the language to no longer need the app

If it worked for you word of mouth will spread and others will try it as well. I don't see why these companies shouldn't be interested in that. They might lengthen the process and not give you the most efficient solution however.

People find love through dating apps, people can learn the basics of a language through language apps. The company wins either way. Maximizing screen time is not everything.

This isn't to say that these apps don't have a place in the language learning process, but rather I'm saying that you need to be incredibly wary not just of the privacy issues, but of how to actually use these apps effectively. If you're aware of their tricks, then they become less effective.

Good point. It's hard to learn a language and if you invest the time you'll get a good grasp on it through these apps. I leant multiple languages at school and it was really similar to what Duolingo e.g. are doing.

BUT in the end you still can't master a language without speaking it with other people. That however, is not a service that these apps can provide. They should, however, make it possible for you to find a basic foundation for communication. The gamification aspect also helps.

Regarding the privacy argument I completely agree.

Yeah duolingo is useless for me lol. I took spanish throughout highschool and I recently installed the app and the intro test shot me straight to the end. Just one year of a highschool class will teach more.

As a professional mobile app developer most of these lines are bullshit anyways.

Purchase history? Yeah that's just if you've bought subscriptions to the service. Of course we fucking know your purchase history: if we didn't how would you get anything with a purchase?

Crash analytics? Cool we get a stack trace of what happened when it crashed. Half the time it's not even helpful because it's buried deep in some fucking Java library.

Things like coarse location are getting more specific and a few lines here can be used to deanonymize you when used together but (or an advertising I'd which can be used to track you no matter what) but the majority of data passed to phone devs is us frantically trying to figure out what combination of make & model of android device combined with android version caused your app to crash.

Anonymity is important and we should all take it seriously. Most of this has jack shit to do with being anonymous.

Besides: ewa is listed as a paragon here when they collect advertising data, the most targeted and least anonymous of all data gathering.

Seriously, this is data representation gore.