"If you hang around the Spanish learning subreddits you’ll find more positive testimonials of DS than ANY other app (Duolingo, Busuu, whatever)."

Actually Dreaming Spanish isn't that popular on other subreddits, at least where I go. The only places where it's highly talked about is in other Dreaming Spanish circles. The videos in of themselves don't get many views. I've read more reviews on the other apps.

"You have a video showing someone who’s went through the program and speak with close to native fluency, and you say oh but they posted that themselves so it doesn’t count (funny how Duolingo can’t even do that btw lol). "

Never said Duolingo didn't do that though? It's something all companies are guilty of.

And, also, yes. Anything a company uses to promote itself deserves skepticism. If Apple was accused of a serious crime, you wouldn't trust them to investigate themselves now would you? Not saying DS or Apple did anything, but that's just an example.

"You say why don’t they write and record in Spanish… Dude you can have an A0 level of Spanish and still write perfect Spanish with ChatGPT"... "Plus these language learning subreddits are English subreddits with conversations in English, why would someone just bust out Spanish"

But this logic applies everywhere though? You could easily go on ITalki and google translate every single sentence and claim you're an English master. But at the end of the day, it's a waste of time. You can go on reddit and pretend to be a fisherman for all I care. But... people won't.

Writing some basic spanish in a post to showcase your spanish abilities isn't the end of the world, and there's many posts of people actually doing it in learn-english based subs. It's the same reason why youtubers speak the language their learning in their videos.

They COULD be lying, but unless you were paid to promote the company, I see no reason to, and it provides a general basis.

Also, side note, in an attempt to go against my argument, you just provided a reason as to why it's okay to be skeptical of what people are claiming.