The Scoop: The internet turned against Duolingo. It saw 40% user growth anyway.

Duolingo was once a social media darling, beloved for its unhinged owl mascot who appeared in videos threatening users for not continuing their streak on the app and copulating with a sponge. But after its CEO announced the integration of more AI into the app, leading to a decreased headcount and use of contractors, the same social media users who once loved Duo the owl turned against the app. Every social media post became a cascade of comments asking, “Did AI make this?” and “Duolingo’s falloff needs to be studied.” For a while, Duolingo fought back with mock-cringe, teenage emo videos. It even briefly deleted all its TikToks.

But after all the angst, all the angry social media posts, Duolingo beat earnings expectations this week. The company beat its earnings estimates, increased active users by 40% year-over-year and is on track to earn $1 billion in annual revenue.

CEO Luis von Ahn did acknowledge the controversy when explaining why that 40% figure was at the lower end of estimates.

“The reason we came [in] towards the lower end was because I said some stuff about AI, and I didn’t give enough context. Because of that, we got some backlash on social media,” von Ahn said, according to TechCrunch. “The most important thing is we wanted to make the sentiment on our social media positive. We stopped posting edgy posts and started posting things that would get our sentiment more positive. That has worked.”

Why it matters: Social media is a powerful tool for marketing, building positive sentiment and gauging customer reaction. But it’s easy to over-exaggerate its importance to the bottom line.

We’ve seen this before. When Netflix cracked down on password sharing, social media erupted, declaring it the end of the streamer and promising to unsubscribe. While some certainly did, overall revenue surged. The company added more than 8.7 million users immediately after the policy change.

The people most likely to post on social media are those who love and hate you the most. That can make it difficult to separate signal from noise and determine how many of the posters would have purchased from you in the first place. And while using AI to replace workers is and will continue to be a controversial topic, Duolingo’s use of the tools allowed it to more than double its language course offerings, which surely brought in new users who want to learn less popular languages more than they’re interested in the implications of AI use.

You can’t ignore social media. You need to listen and report those findings back to leadership. But you need to understand it’s only one data point.

Editor’s Top Reads:

• In another example of the sometimes misleading nature of social media, a New York Times investigation found that much of the controversy over American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ad did not originate with a groundswell of liberals criticizing the ad — but with conservative commentators seizing on a handful of obscure accounts and fanning the spark into a raging fire. “In fact, by the time right-wing users were in an uproar, only a few thousand posts on X mentioned Ms. Sweeney, according to data by Tweet Binder, a social media analytics company,” the Times reported. “Fewer than 10 percent of those expressed clear criticism of the actress or ad, according to the analysis by The Times, which used artificial intelligence to help flag posts for review. Overall, there were three times as many posts supportive of the campaign and Ms. Sweeney on X as there were posts critical of them in the days after the campaign began, the analysis by The Times showed.” What a strange moment we’re in. Controversy moved from small-follower social media accounts into the conservative media ecosystem, including podcasts and television, eventually becoming a major stock market mover and earning commentary from major politicians. There’s no real way to prevent this kind of situation. However, early media monitoring can help flag the situation . American Eagle’s late response may have helped the situation grow even further out of control.
• ChatGPT has released its long-awaited GPT-5 model to everyone, including free users. OpenAI promises a host of improvements with the updated LLM, including fewer hallucinations, higher-level reasoning and more clearly communicating when it can’t complete a task. Several experts told CNBC the model is a “breakthrough.” The promise of LLMs that lie less is particularly enticing. This announcement comes with tons of marketing hype and grandiose promises about being the equivalent of having a team of PhDs at your fingertips. How it actually plays out in the real world remains to be seen. Start experimenting and let us know what you find.
• David Ellison, new owner of Paramount, held a press conference about the major media merger. For the first time, he faced a bevvy of reporters lobbing questions at him about what political promises the company may have made in order to get the merger through and what plans it has for supporting President Donald Trump in the future. Ellison bobbed and weaved, avoiding direct answers. “We are not going to politicize anything today,” he answered when asked if it was true that the network would give Trump $20 million in free ads, Business Insider reported. “I do not want to politicize our company in any way, shape or form,” he said when asked about Paramount’s agreement with the FCC. “We’re ready to move past the noise,” he said. It’s clear Ellison was media trained well to stay on message, but whether the company will actually be able to move past the noise and avoid addressing major questions about what promises it made in order to get the merger approved remains to be seen. As we saw from American Eagle, it doesn’t matter if you want to politicize your company. Sometimes it’s done for you, and you need to find a way not just to avoid questions, but to handle them head-on.

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.