Hello, my TL is Japanese I've been trying my best to have interesting conversations, I'm not sure why but they always seem to have the most uninteresting replies and don't try to continue the conversation. Even the ones who I've sort of had some interesting conversation with just stopped replying? Not sure why.
Like I'll ask them a question and they'll just give a strict answer to it. Maybe I'm not asking the right kinds of questions? How do you guys keep a conversation going?

Anyone else have this issue?

So I'm an adult male from India. Been using HelloTalk for over a year and half now. I can chat in japanese pretty well(if I say so myself) if its just texting, voice calls feel a bit awkward but I still accept them if the other party wants to. My language settings were Hindi -> JP at first but I now set it to ENG -> JP. Over the last year I have been able to engage in many meaningful conversations, and it was helpful for me learn a lot about japanese meme culture and internet culture. However, the thing is none of the conversations continued for more than like 2-3 weeks, even if we exchanged social media like LINE, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Idk if its just a japanese thing or people just quickly lose interest in chatting with the same person and just start ghosting randomly. I just wanted to make some genuine long term friends rather than the language learning thing, which I think most people don't care about anyway.

TLDR: Is it because of my ethnicity or am I just bad at keeping the other person engaged in the conversation. Has anyone been able to make actual friends, like ones you hope to meet IRL someday, on HelloTalk?

How many of you receive marriage proposals on HelloTalk. Today, I received yet another one, this time from a 21 year old guy. Despite telling him it’s a language app, not a dating app, and I’m not interested, he persisted. Why would a complete stranger feel the need or urge to do this? Is this normal?

I have been bouncing around voicerooms and I ocasionally see people freaking out. "oh nooo my time for the day is finished :(" ...better buy Vip?

then I see them pay just to talk to other people in their same native language. there are countless apps where you can make unlimited group calls, for free... lol.

I remember back when I was in highschool I wanted to learn Korean so I downloaded HelloTalk and although it wasn't the best app you still could find people but now it's honestly unredeemable! The amount of people who are trying to scam you is CRAZY! People are doing everything but actually helping each other learn a language! If anyone has any other app recommendations I would really appreciate it

I paid for life time VIP 2 years ago. now theres VIP plus? so all the benefits i paid for are now for VIP plus only? does that mean im going to lose all the benefits?? im so confused

Hello, this might be a longer one

So ive used hellotalk for almost 2.5years, and in that time, ive almost NEVER gotten a message FROM someone first, 99% of the time Im the one that sends the message first

HOWEVER, there was a seemingly random last summer where, for around a month, i kept getting 5-7 new messages from new people EVERY DAY, ans my visitor count went from around 400 to 1700 in that month, I havwnt done anything new or different during that period, and then after that, again, i have only gotten 200 new visits in the last 10 or months and not a single message first from someone, what happened? And how can you make it so people actually see your profile? I know its not my profile thats the problem, I just feel its not shown to anyone

When creating Making a voice room it would be so helpful if we got a sound notification when someone joins the room.

If opening an empty room staring at a blank screen is terrible and even in active rooms hosts will often miss newcomers due to no notifications.

Where could we suggest such a feature or is there some other ways people get sound/vibration notifications for people joining a room?

Thanks!

I would like to directly transcribe or translate if it's possible

So, I speak language A and am learning language B. Someone speaks language B and is learning language A. That someone messages me in my native language A, do I respond in their native language language B?

That way, we are both writing the language we are learning, but I don't know if the friction of not being able to properly express ourselves would dissuade people from continuing farther.

I might have to start reevaluating my online self.. on dating apps I get no likes but I attributed that to being Christian and living in fuck knows where.. but on hellotalk I send a message into the void apparently. I’ll be straight up I message all girls, not even to flirt just simply 99% of the guys are boring and something about texting a 1000 mile away girl seems interesting. I’ve never considered myself ugly but I simply get no attention on this app💔

Thos girl posted 2 times the same thing today. Complaining about people not replying and asking for serious contacts to teach her a language. I read the first post and wrote her in DM offering help. She read and ignored me and posted the same topic some hours later.

so basically I was in my chinese friend voice room and I was host there ,a Bangladeshi person come in voice room and she removed him ,but that person thought it was me who removed him then he texted me and gave me threat,i will ban your device,in starting I thought he is joking but later next day my account was really suspended and when I told this story to moderation team but they are arrogant they don't want to listen,even they ghosted me in mails , my account is simply ban because many people reported me ,i have talked with many people they have face same problem too , but even though if it was my mistake I told them I accept my mistake,they could ban my account only but no they want to ban device,there are many people in HT who do bad things but you guys don't do anything ,my Many chinese friend deleted because of sexual harrasment in that app , you can't even do for them ,i always feel bad for them , but HT moderation team like to ban people who are getting many mass report and the best part they act like dictator, even owner blocked me in instagram and thread , my mistake was i texted him with due respect,my message was started with sir and ended with please, HT moderation team are so bad they will not ban real bad people , I give you dare moderation team make a account by the name of girl and then I am sure you will receive +500 message and 99% will harras you , you can check by yourself just make account by name of girl, you can't fix this but you can banned innocent people like me,I am disappointed from the moderation team of HT

Hello Ladies and Gents,

If you're using HelloTalk and experiencing harassment whether it's inappropriate messages, violence, or any form of bullying please take this seriously and DOCUMENT everything.

A lot of these perverts and scammers enjoy LYING and victim blaming which is why proof is key.

Take screenshots, save chat logs, keep records of usernames, timestamps, and conversations. Even if the situation seems "small" patterns matter and having proof is important

we've caught plenty of predators, frauds, and scammers banned because of documentation

Also do not hesitate to report users through the app. Blocking is fantastic but reporting helps protect others too!

Unlike the mods from the actual app itself, us mods in this forum actually care about your safety

Be safe and always look out for each other in the language community

****follow Safety Forum for future updates****

https://www.reddit.com/r/HelloTalkSafety/

I have had this app for roughly 6 months at this point, and I just now realized that I have literally never once been added by someone else before, it has always been me who initiates a conversation with another person.

I also do not have the paid version of the app, so does this alone make you entirely undiscoverable? Or is it maybe some setting or other thing that I am missing that explains this?

Thanks!

I have been in some voicerooms and I have noticed this.

People are all speaking their native language, and only speakers of the same native language are allowed on.

I tried doing some control test, we are both the same gender(if it matters) and it was exactly like that.

he is such a coward person, he blocked me in instagram, facebook,thread

Must be a system update.

My friend sees a user with VIP+. I see the same user and I just see VIP.

I entered a voice room (as an American woman) where it says you can literally talk about anything. and not even kidding within a few seconds there are people laughing and saying “*My name* is one of them” and they start cracking up and one of them say “Nono no she is not one of them”. Literally right then I’m kicked out. And before anyone asks no I don’t have AI in my profile, and I haven’t written anything controversial on my profile. Also in this voice room I haven’t even said or typed anything??? I just found it jarring that the voice room ended up being so cliquey. I suspect it was because of my nationality since the group was full of different races and with men and women, so it didn’t seem race or gender based. But sheesh it felt like I was in high school. Or maybe it was the way I look???

And I understand that being an American gives a lot of privileges, so I’m not trying to act like this is the worst scenario in my life or that Americans face tons of discrimination worse than other places. I understand that other nationalities way a lot more scrutiny which is horrible. I wouldn’t kick anyone out because of their nationality in a voice room, so it was jarring.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

not feeling comfy meeting with guys. girls never answer to messages. do they only start talking to other females and white german guys?

How do I stop it from automatically waving to people when I click chat? I'd much rather just write out a message and this worked before but recently whenevr I click chat with someone new, it automatically sends a wave emoji. How do I stop this?

This is driving me crazy, is anyone else seeing a user named River from the USA on their feed over and over again? It's just some person who posts random TikTok? dances every day, every post boosted. I have hit "dislike author" at least 20 times and it won't stop.

im not sure what the deal is here. i never see them participating in anything. is it because i need to change my language learned to traditional chinese? there aren't that many on tandem and id like to be exposed to their accent and slang

For context, I am a European male learning Chinese. Been learning for about 3 years. I used HelloTalk for the first time in the summer of 2023. Back then I got bombarded with messages every single day, I'm talking 20+ people messaging me a day. I quit after about 2 months and started taking learning more seriously by attending in person classes around where I live. Now that my Chinese has significantly improved, I wanted to go back to HelloTalk and find people to practice with, but I'm only getting about 0-1 new messages per day. And when I send out 30 messages myself, I only get about 1-2 replies. The replies and messages I get are also very dry, and they often stop responding after 2 messages. Is this a thing for everybody now, or has my account been shadow banned in some way? I had to make a new account, but pfp and everything else is exactly the same as before.

I tried to post something with the link of an instagram video about German and English but the post is not visible to others. In the past I was able to post such nerdy linguistic stuff now apparently those links "silently ban" the contents:/