FAKE five star reviews
The recent five star reviews are very obviously written by HelloTalk staff themselves as damage control. Notice how they are all Chinese and don't actually leave any constructive feedback - just mindless praise? I noticed the app has been getting a lot of criticism recently both from within the app itself and on various online forums like the unofficial HT subreddit etc. There are various reasons for this such as: -Banning users who criticise China or recognise Taiwan and Hong Kong as independent nations. Shilling for the CCP is fine tho! -The constant sexual harassment of female users, of with the developers encourage by ignoring reports and refusing to ban users. I have experienced this many times. -Promoting sexualised content and selfies with revealing poses and clothing while simultaneously saying "dating is not allowed". You can even pay money to access the "selfies" tab. I thought this was a language learning app? LOL -Aggressively pushing you to buy expensive and worthless addons and in app items -Limiting your visibility if unless you pay for a "VIP membership" -Intrusive spam advertising crammed into every corner -Developers are obviously trying to plagiarise Instagram and Duolingo. Even the emoji and reward art style is similar to Duo. -Making an "influencer program" to pay people to shill for them.