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Carmel Kittell
When a user replaces their photo, the previous photo is already completely deleted and no longer associated with their account, which is why there is currently no easy way to recover a previous avatar. Users can also completely delete their account, if they wish to do so.
I never had a picture of myself as a profile pic in Duolingo anyway. I like to be more private and don't see a need to show my face on a platform like DL. If someone doesn't want to follow me cause I don't have a pic of myself so be it. I mostly care about my actual real life friends who are following me and who I follow on DL. Or folks I got to know from interacting with them on the internet. And all of those folks know who I am and what I look like cause we also interact elsewhere.
When I first started using Duolingo, it was still kind of weird to use your own picture on the internet, and so I never did on there. I don't think I use a picture of myself anywhere at this point. Even on Facebook, I use a picture of one of my cats. I don't feel the need to know the physical appearance of everyone I interact with on a language learning platform.
I don't know why, but I suspect that someday everyone will have a generic avatar. The profile picture is the last bit of freedom we have on Duolingo. I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to get rid of it as well.
I'm absolutely sure they are going to come up with some other great ideas on how to self-destruct by reducing valuable content, like removing all languages except for one ("Esperanto as a generic language is all the users need, we know that noone would ever want to choose to learn anything else!").
They force more and more users into them (new app feature, store auto updates; mobile users are getting now those popup dialogues to create one) and I can't keep up deleting them and cleaning up the old friends list (which I had hand picked, took a lot of effort going through forums, SHOF ranking tables,.. and adding users manually).
I encourage everyone to send staff (almost said spam with ) bug reports -us/a ... ort-a-bug- and specifically ask to shut off their stupid new app features, and be able to turn them off selectively which they force onto users as I've heard there's no way to go back once chosen.
I'm not using the path/snake, have no iOS device here for usage but I would personally complain daily to staff if the old tree would show those ugly cartoon friend avatars everywhere with no option to hide them.
Same thing with the normal cartoon characters in the lessons which I can't hide on the old Android app. There's simply no setting.
Just a waste of free screen space and given top translation text hardly fits on the display without multiple line breaks.
Maybe if thousands of users get onto their nerves on a daily basis and/or offer money (ideally a one-time payment) wanting to keep the old avatar Web feature (uploading real portrait pictures, which somehow need to be moderated) they take another direction, like the Memrise staff often did when receiving feedback on their - now suddenly discontinued - community forum.
Wow, finally after almost seven years I can receive again free text congratulation messages in the Android app from Portuguese native speakers (a very new app feature in most recent versions)!!
But very often can't see the real person behind it anymore or access the user profile who posted it as I only see it in the small Android OS notification screen.
Okay...but weren't most of the uploaded photos fake, too? I recall seeing Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and countless musicians and athletes, plus myriad cats and dogs. Also, not all artists, performers and public figures are household names. Ninety percent of the time, I can't tell if a bio photo is genuine, wishful thinking, or an homage to an idol. Speaking only for myself, the choice is too inconsequential to perform an image search on Google to find out. Avatars do not bother me at all, but I agree users should be free to attach any inoffensive, legal, 2-dimensional image to their Duolingo profile.
If, as a lawyer (U. Chicago 1985, member NYS Bar), I had to surmise why Duolingo is phasing out photos, it is because their site is riddled with unauthorized copyrighted images of John Lennon, Lady Gaga, and others being used as bio pics.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is brutal. Statutory damages depend on the number of times each unauthorized copyrighted image is viewed, an incalculable but generally enormous number (tens to perhaps hundreds of thousands), times $75-$350 per litigated image. Copyright holders do not have to prove any actual economic harm; statutory damages are automatic. More important, the fact that customers (not Duolingo) uploaded the photo is not a valid DMCA defense.
The 'edit my profile' now has been replaced by 'edit my avatar' in my case.
You can bypass the 'edit my avatar' trap preceding 'edit my profile' but the only way around is safeguarding some of the 'edit my profile' bookmarks. Such as:
This immediately also gives you access to the below menus (and a few more):
Note for DL learners laddering: The languages showing up in the list are (only) those you learn from the teaching language you last used.
(...)
The avatars are so horrendous and impersonal. I'm thinking of switching to a different platform. I really hate that my photo can't appear. Any suggestions of alternative apps where I can exist as a real person!
First they trick us into changing without letting us know we can't go back.
Second, they use extremely cheap, unappealing graphics.
Third, give us no way to contact them or address issues directly.
I do think they don't care...
......cost savings for cutting all staffs' moderation of required profile/avatar report handing is probably much higher than what a bunch of single users pay for a yearly Super subscription.
FYI: Even before their newly forced avatar feature many of internal staff mainly used some comicerized versions of their real photo and didn't want to upload a true avatar photo....some of them still use / have a real photo.
Thats annoying! As the thread title says, I was lured into creating an avatar and now cant get my old picture back on the app. Its ok on the web where you still get the option to upload an image but the app no longer gives you a choice. So now I've got two different images. An old photo on the web and a stupid cartoon on the app.
It somehow s...ed quite much when Hellolingo was only text based and no pictures of accounts were given.
But then it was at least possible to give a quite long bio text and reference other websites.
Wish I would have had saved mine... but it's lost forever.
On Busuu many people upload their portrait photos so this is easier to add a few selected friends.
Unfortunately, Busuu doesn't support searching for usernames and adding them with direct user_ids or from external resources, only internally from their suggested lists.
Learners from DL staff themselves have been heavily using cartoonized avatars for a longer time on their own accounts.
I'm not a big fan of them.
Surely won't hit any mobile app button to create a random avatar, like within the game LingoLegend.
I moved your post from Duome Request forum to here. Please note that that forum is for Duome related requests only.
Unfortunately, we can't fix Duolingo issues, only post them.
Other accounts have or have had your exact same problem that you can read about in this thread.
If you want to submit your complaint to Duolingo, please read How do I report a bug?, email to Duolingo support, or try its social media channels.
I noticed it in the friends activity stream that several followers (some of them which I had been following for years) who congratulated me for two actions (2300 streak and 10 lessons per day) that many of them in the list only had those ridiculous cartoon avatars.
This basically means I have unfollowed most of them as I can't remember their real portrait picture.
Another issue: It's hard to list followers by "recently added" and to check for empty avatars or some fake or nonsense pictures.
And as I don't want to be followed by very UNKNOWNusers (same thing like animals or generic or empty avatars) on a "social platform" (well, I get it: Duolingo is more about learning and pushing back from any social interaction over all the years - more and more) my only option was to pick the "Block user xx" feature.
Duolingo staff NEVER should have removed the BIO field as my concerns expressed in the text now are not to be read by any users on this Duolingo platform (for some reason Duome profile also got the bio field removed - well, we can't edit it anymore).
Duolingo more and more becomes unusable...now it is happening to the "friend streams".
Looking back to end of 2016 I could even send PMs to some of them living in other countries with the Activity streams.
This is really ridiculous having to suddenly see many followers (on the Duo profile) and congratulations on the friends streams from cartooned users (I never liked non-personal avatars and many chose wanting to be anonym and have not uploaded a portrait picture willingly, which I can accept).
Any personal touch and connected feeling is lost that way.
Sadly to say, my friends update view gets now flooded from more and more cartooned users who I follow, follow me or both for a longer time.
They all fell for this "Create a cartoon avatar" trap on the app.
I'm unfollowing more and more users, also very OLD users from 2013/14 -2016 join date.
If they follow me with that damn new cartoon face I also have to block them now to get rid of all those entries on the friends update stream.