Duolingo users are fed up with strangers cluttering their feeds

Duolingo hasn’t particularly been shy about making controversial platform tweaks, but its social feed design is driving learners up the wall. Following widespread frustration over disruptive course updates that scrambled progress paths and introduced unfamiliar vocabulary, users are now facing another persistent headache: random strangers taking over their activity feed. Instead of highlighting milestones from actual friends and family, Duolingo continues to mix in social updates from complete strangers, diluting the feature’s core purpose.

Reddit user EnoughConcentrate897 voiced their exasperation over their feed being filled with 100-day streaks and sentence shares from accounts they don’t know or follow, and so many other users chimed in with the same frustration.

For many, the clutter defeats the point of having a friend list in the first place. Several long-time users noted that they have completely stopped using the feed to celebrate their real-life friends’ achievements because those updates get buried under a mountain of unsolicited community activity.

In response, frustrated learners have begun taking matters into their own hands. Some are manually blocking dozens of random profiles daily, while others have resorted to marking unknown accounts as spam simply to keep their feeds clean. Reddit user SnarkyBeanBroth is urging Duolingo to implement basic social controls, such as feed filters (“Friends Only” vs. “Community”), while Reddit user Poolkonijntje wants a traditional follow-request approval system that would give users control over who appears in their updates.

Duolingo has increasingly prioritized gamification and social connectivity to keep users hooked, but users are clearly not happy with this change to their feed. Whether the company will address these feed customization requests or continue pushing algorithmic discovery remains to be seen. For now, the green owl’s social experiment is testing learner patience once again.