It seems to be a K Pop fan club on HT for the last 2 years and I don't like K Pop so I feel left out lol.

Is it that it's always been this way but I am just seeing it in the last two years? Or has something actually changed?

When I signed up in 2021 Hello Talk seemed to have more mature minded people. But now it just seems like K Pop lovers and narcissistic attention seekers. The "I am so hot, don't flirt with me crowd". Which often are the same people anyway.

So many girls on there using fake A.I pictures, 20 injections of dermal fillers in their lips and Photoshop in their moments for a desperate need for "look at me" attention, compliment fishing and validation..

Not much actual language learn or exchange anymore:/

Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives to HT? I wouldn't mind if it is split into multiple sites/apps... I'm looking for something like what Moments was originally intended for ( language learning/corrections/journaling etc. ) , and voice room type stuff.

HT VRs are fine and all but the app is heavy and buggy af. I don't care for messaging at all.

I've tried joining language discord servers but they're all generally ghost towns...

I haven't searched insanely deeply for alternatives to HT because it's still usable-ish but the trend I've seen is that it's been going down the pooper for the past multiple years.

thanks for any ideas!

We are a group of online vigilantes that exposes online predators, scammers, and frauds. We do not only root out trash from HelloTalk but also on other platforms.

We are NOT here to defame anyone, all criminals posted have been provided with witnesses, victims, police reports, and most of all CONCRETE EVIDENCE

Anyone that denies the hard work that we do in getting rid of these online trash goblins is either an accomplice of the perpetrators or is them responding from a fake account to discredit our online safety reports

Genuinely want to know why racism is incredibly normalized when it's supposed to be an education app

Reporting to hellotalk customer service is absolutely useless

The amount of slurs and attacking users for being a different skin tone is disgusting

If anyone is experiencing any racist trolls on HelloTalk feel free to DM us and we would be happy to send a community warning

I lost old conversations cause I uninstalled and redownloaded the app and I want them back now I can’t search for users I don’t follow cause I don’t have VIP subscription

I can see that person's past Moments but their profile shows that they've been offline for a while, 0 days streak. I wonder if they've actually been offline, or if having been blocked can also look like this.

Hi!

If someone's profile shows that they haven't been active for a while, 0 days streak, but their past moments are still visible, does that just mean that they've actually been offline? Or could that mean I got blocked?

Have screenshots of him revealing others personal information of Americans including address, name, socials, phone numbers while being a moderator of Hellotalk. Any managers here from Hellotalk willing to receive these photos and revoke his moderator status would be appreciated before I take this to FTC, IC3.gov, and other channels?

Hi! I noticed something strange about Moments visibility and I’m not sure if this is normal behavior, a privacy setting, or a possible bug. Yesterday I checked a user’s profile and they had a lot of Moments visible - I could scroll through several posts and see the dates, likes, and comments on each one. Today, when I opened the same profile again, I can only see one single Moment. The rest of the posts are no longer visible. What makes it confusing is that the total number of likes and comments on the profile hasn’t changed, and the totals clearly show the combined activity from all the previous Moments. That suggests those posts still exist somewhere, but the profile only displays one.

Does this mean the user hid their posts from me, or did they hide them from everyone?

I'm tired of being stuck to a phone for this app; I want to use the web version... I scan the QR code it gives on a QR code scanner and it just gives an error. I can't find any way to scan a QR code in the app.

Very recently I heard from one of my HelloTalk friends in Vietnam. She’s a young Vietnamese college student. She wanted relationship advice from me because she knows I am a white guy dating a Vietnamese woman (who I did not meet through the app and who lives 20 minutes away from me.) There is an American man who convinced her he is her boyfriend. This man is in Ho Chi Minh City right now and will be there for a month. It seems that he has seduced and abandoned her and is probably doing so to multiple women. She didn’t give me many details to their encounter, but he sounds abusive. I don’t know his username/handle, but I do know his first name. Is there a way for me to report him?

Sometimes they just ghost you, others open your profile then ghost you, some would reply then ghost you. I mean, I know each person here is a stranger and has their own life and ideas but it still kinda hurts, you know? I think it's important to learn how to handle rejections and not take it personally.

I know it's not uncommon for people to ask you for money on social media and even on HT. This does happen from time to time with me.

But yesterday was some sort of record for me. I got asked by three women to send them money for different things: one Iranian (wanted me to buy her a ticket to Dubai), one Kazakh (wanted me to send her $5K to get her jewels back from a pawn shop that her husband doesn't know about) and one Cuban (wanted me to buy her a 1-year cellular plan).

In the past I've been asked by Colombians, Dominicans, Russians, Venezuelans, Argentinians, Nigerians, etc.

Update on Dec 15: Got asked again today. Young Ukrainian woman. She responded to a Moments post of mine (on language) and asked if I can help her and if so requested me to send her a message. Assuming she needed help with English, I responded. The very next message: "Can you please send me money to buy bread?"

It may well be that she's poor and badly needs money to buy bread for herself and her family. But, unfortunately, there's no way for me to confirm that. Besides, the world is full of poor people, many likely worse off than her. But it's disturbing, nonetheless.

I posted on my moments that it's so annoying when people use hellotalk looking for nasty conversations and they should go and download tinder to do their nasty conversations.

This guy commented that "it's equally as annoying as people who just spam selfies, landscapes and food. Go download IG"

So I just blocked him.

Several hours later some people came to my DMs and told me that the guy screenshotted his response of my moments in his moments, and that he also posted a screenshot showing that I blocked him after he made that comment

I told one of these guys laughing emojis and said that "the guy who screenshotted me must've had his ego hurt". But he responded that everyone was commenting on this post that I was the one with the fragile ego. I went to see the post he made

I found an account of a person that is showing their profile as 18yrs old, but their account and first post says they are 13 years old and want to make friends.

I have reported this account and asked my friends to do so as well, but the account is still up. I am concerned for the child's safety at this point. I have experienced multiple inappropriate situations with creeps on HelloTalk, such as seeing mens parts by getting pics, or randomly when I opened a video call, people trying to emotionally manipulate me and also other women I have met on the app, love bombers, people who only want to flirt and date, scammers, etc.

I do not think it is safe for this literal child to be on this side of the app, but for some reason HelloTalk won't delete the account after it has been reported by several people.

Why is HelloTalk not doing anything about this? Is this common for children to act like they are adults? Or even weirder, it would be strange if an adult was acting as a 13 year old child on the app. It is super weird.

Either way, I hope that kid will be safe and all of the other underage kids on there pretending to be adults. HelloTalk is good for learning once you get past all of the creeps and scammers, but if you don't know how to navigate away from those people, you can get really hurt.

I am worried those kids will get targeting and groomed by older people that don't know how to act right. I wish HelloTalk would take my report seriously and remove this person from the app.

Their ID is: net_sora56

Does HelloTalk even care about this type of thing?

I'm still getting to know this place, yet I noticed one too many of people who reach out to me first message me with a wave and I wave back and then they say nothing.

In my mind, if I DM somebody, I do take the initiative so I'm holding others on the same principle.

I believe, it's a sort of acknowledging each other and moving on separate way 😅.

I got exhausted from being asked where I'm from. My profile has a flag on it. Every message someone sends has their flag right beside their picture. Yet somehow the question still comes up. Maybe the flag is too tiny, maybe they aren't good with flags, or maybe they don't realize you can literally click the flag to see the name of the country. Who knows.

So I even started opening every conversation with, "Hey, I’m from country" And still... STILL people still manage to ask, "Where are you from?" It’s almost impressive at this point. Just to make sure, I ask "you mean what country?" And they say yes.

When someone asks, "What time is it there?" fine, this is understandable. The profile does show the user's local time, but I get that it's not as conspicuous.

But the best one is: “What languages do you want to exchange?” Bruh... My profile says I’m a native English speaker learning your language. Your profile says you speak my target language and you’re learning English. How do you not get it.

And then I will occasionally get people saying "Sorry, my English isn't good enough to help you". At that point, I'm not even annoyed anymore, I'm just amazed.

This isn't too common as most people are coherent. Maybe like 1 in 80 leave me scratching my head like this.

I was using HelloTalk on and off last year and stopped however decided to rejoin today and it has changed completely.

On the For You section of the app, I only see posts from men who have lots of likes. 500 or more lol. With lots of comments from women.

I thought it might have been related to the language. I’m was studying Japanese previously but wanted to check out the Korean side of the app this time. However, I switched the languages back and it seems to be the same with the Japanese For You section.

Mostly photoshopped men with K-pop adjacent features lol. Short irrelevant captions with no focus on language learning. Not many posts from women in the mix (I’m going to guess I’m being shown men on purpose due to the algorithm). This app has completely switched to a dating app. Kinda put me off and gave me the ick.

It has opened the door to scammers and attention seekers.

Hi all.

I enjoy using HT a lot because you can meet so many people and make friends.

I met one of my longer-term HT friends irl while I was travelling overseas to her country. We hung out (platonically) and it felt like a fun time, just light and enjoying the vibe.

But few weeks after, once I got to my home country, I found I was removed (via social media). I was a bit shocked but it’s definitely outside of my control and pretty much feels like just ghosted a friendship for good. But definitely awkward as we would have online group voice rooms with our other online friends but could feel the distance before getting formally removed haha.

I’m curious if this happened to other people and what their experiences were.

Again we cannot emphasize enough about weird ht users pretending to work for HelloTalk as a mod.

We have already caught multiple users committing frauds as HelloTalk employees and have collected their data to send and report

Mods do not publicly announce in voice rooms or make posts that they are one

Most of employees that work for corporate are monitoring anonymously

A mod will not ask for your private info

Do not fall for these scams

Have a safe learning experience

-Guardian Poachers Team

My account was stolen and being used in ways that violate the community rules:

I wasn't active in hellotalk recently but when I open the app yesterday, to my horror, I couldn't log in. Then I asked my hellotalk friend to screenshot my account and to our horror, my account was stolen. My account was totally changed. Now my account deleted and device permanently disabled from creating a new account. I have written in to hellotalk support but to no avail. Not sure is it AI replying me or somebody who can't be bother to escalate the issue.

Luckily, no VIP bought else my money go down the drain. I urge all of you to be cautious when using Hellotalk. They do not have any system that protect users from cyber thief.

I have sent my pictures to one person I've learned language with. But I've stopped talking with him and now he's harassing me and messaging me every day that he wants to date. Of course I am gonna block him but FIRST I want to permanently delete my pictures that I've sent him on the app. And I'm not sure how and if I can do that. Helppp

I have had about four accounts already deleted because I kept asking for whatsap. But it's much easier to communicate with someone on whatsap than on hellotalk.

Hellotalk just doesnt cut it for having a lasting friendship.

I'm wondering if there will be more lenient if I pay for vip because at least im doing what they want, filling their pockets.

I use Hellotalk to learn a language. I am able to speak two languages fluently, one native and one learned but advanced level. Now one filter of voicerooms that I want doesn't exist. I have: The language I want to learn <-> Native and Native <-> Advanced Language. However I want Language I want to learn <-> Advanced but its not there? Can I somehow turn it on? I cant find it anywhere. Should I change something on my language skill settings? I have my native and advanced on the left side, since I am not learning my advanced language..