{"id":211,"date":"2025-05-08T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/?p=211"},"modified":"2025-05-08T21:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T21:20:00","slug":"but-you-can-never-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/2025\/05\/08\/but-you-can-never-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8230;but you can never leave"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I refer of course to the surprise ending of the song &#8220;Hotel California&#8221;:\u00a0<em>You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.<\/em> I hadn&#8217;t expected this to be the case for Duolingo, but here we are.<\/p>\n<p>Some months ago an online friend decided to leave the platform. Just to be sure, they changed their account name to &#8220;TN not here&#8221; before deactivating the account. They also informed her online friends through other channels.<\/p>\n<p>I still get &#8220;TN not here&#8221; as a suggestion for friends quests, but of course I ignore that and another friend who announced her taking a break from Duolingo. But that doesn&#8217;t stop Duolingo from initiating friends quests on their behalf.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, if you leave Duolingo and close your account, Duolingo will take control of it and play it for you.<\/p>\n<p>Of all dubious practices I would have accused Duo of, necromancy was not among them.<\/p>\n<p>This is not like Facebook reminding you of your friend&#8217;s birthday after he died suddenly. This person deliberately leaves the platform and tries to close their account, but Duolingo pretends they are still there and playing\/learning. Remember this if you plan to leave. Change your username first, if you are still allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I refer of course to the surprise ending of the song &#8220;Hotel California&#8221;:\u00a0You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. I hadn&#8217;t expected this to be the case for Duolingo, but here we are. Some &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/2025\/05\/08\/but-you-can-never-leave\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/duolanguage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}