For me, one of the most important aspects about Italki has always been that it enabled us to come into contact with native speakers from our goal language and to learn from and connect to them. This is such an invaluable part of language learning.

However, I have the impression that Italki has been attempting to leave this behind and instead focus on paid services such as community and professional teacher classes. It appears that as of late, every new update seems to be moving the option to look for "language partners" more and more to the background - even making it

impossible to do so from a desktop computer (just through the app). When you do, the search results for language partners seem to skew more towards teachers now; language partners themselves don't appear as much as it used to.

In any case, I feel like this is a massive loss for us language learners who look to connect with other likeminded people.

Has anyone else been having this experience as well? What are your thoughts?