• jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    That was a huge wall of text - TLDR :

    • Kagi has private investors
    • Kagi has had some questionable uses of the private funding, such as opening a t-shirt company
    • Kagi started as a AI focused company and pivoted to search
    • Kagi is spread too thin over many different projects
    • Kagi doesn’t take privacy, or user data seriously

    Fair enough, but as long as google, bing, ddg, etc get more and more unusable there will be fans of alternative searches

    Even if Kagi crashes and burns, it has demonstrated there is a market demand for useful search results that users pay for directly.

    FWIW I don’t use Kagi because of the login / payment info requirements, so I agree broadly with the author. As bad as public searching is, its good enough to not give up privacy.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      I’ve been really enjoying Qwant since I started using it after Mozilla announced their partnership.

      I am super annoyed when the “turn of ad blocker” popup shows itself. They’d get many more users by not using that and serving ads from the same domain as searches. I get that they have to pay for their services somehow.

  • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
    3·
    9 months ago

    I never had faith in Kagi. If anything gets shilled too much in a cultist manner, treat it like a red flag, no matter closed or FOSS.

    • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zone
      1·
      9 months ago

      I mean, that seems like a really sceptical way to live. Often things get shilled because people are just happy with the service and think the business is doing things well. I am a kagi user and have brought it up to some others, including outside of lemmy, because I find it produces better search results than ddg etc. And it’s a definite step up from google in privacy

      • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
        21·
        9 months ago

        Use Searx with “default [all]” language option. Use Yandex with a VPN. This combo is superior to anything else. Why? Because Yandex is Russian, and unlike western search engines, they ignore DMCA law result removal requests.

        Yandex results are almost better than the old 2007 Google, with reverse image search and video search being the king as well.

        I used Qwant extensively, until they became another business. DDG was made by a CEO that was in data selling business before, and censors for west government agenda, like Russia bad or Israel good. Mojeek is okay but… Yandex has no competition. Startpage is proxied Google, okay but also dicey ownership.

        Digdeeper has a decent comparison of search engines on his blog.

        • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
          1·
          9 months ago

          We’ll try and get that okay up to a good and then a great as time goes by! There’s a submit feedback button on results pages if you’d like to be a part of that.

  • macattack@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 months ago

    I enjoyed reading the article. To me, the perspective of the owner reminds me of the owners of Brave in that they are Libertarian in ways that seem aligned with mainstream views at a glance but the Venn diagram also overlaps with a disdain for regulation, while portraying a (potential) facade of being eternally infallible and trustworthy while also being a for-profit company.

    Elon Musk also comes to mind in that his intelligence leaves him vulnerable to overlooking the nuances of conversations and alternative point of views. I think there’s a general over reliance on artificial intelligence as a savior that will be fully embraced that will lead to large issues in the short/long term for Kagi.

    Personally, it always felt a little bit like astroturfing hearing all of the kagi fanboys in every privacy thread, but for what it’s worth, seeing them show up live In the flesh in this thread as well makes me feel a bit less like I’m talking to bots lol

    Personally, I self-host my own version of searXng that only uses search engines that don’t track my IP address. I’d say that those results are good enough 90% of the time, and when I need something more granular, I use a publicly hosted version of searXng that uses Google in its results

  • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
    2·
    9 months ago

    the CEO sealioning after the author asked them not to contact them anymore is a bit icky, too.

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    2·
    9 months ago

    Kagi is one of the least trustworthy companies I’ve seen recently. I know it has fans, but it constantly talks out of both sides of its mouth.

    Turns out Kagi does do advertising

    Kagi does not give a solitary damn about privacy as the average person understands it.

    We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

    Kagi lied in its emails.

    “AI is mentioned zero times”

    …is clearly incorrect.

    There’s quite a lot more to distrust about a company that wants to lock you into a filter bubble.

    • Vexz@kbin.social
      31·
      9 months ago

      Turns out Kagi does do advertising

      They promote their search engine but their users don’t get to see ads. I don’t know what’s wrong about that. Every company advertises with its products. I don’t see what’s reprehensible about that.

      We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

      They’re right, anonymity and privacy are two different things. Since you have to pay to use Kagi, you’re not anonymous. But they allegedly don’t know what you as the user search for when using their search engine. So they’re being honest here and how can honesty be bad here? Anyways, we’re on privacy@lemmy.ml, not anonymity@lemmy.ml or whatever.

      “AI is mentioned zero times”

      While I still give you this one, they’re technically correct. The word “AI” isn’t there but they mention AI features, haha. It’s a bit debatable since Vlad said “kagi.com” - which doesn’t mention AI or AI tools. Only when you go to the pricing page there are mentions of AI tools.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        2·
        9 months ago

        I don’t think we have an argument except maybe on technicality, so I’ll do my best to use your points as a springboard for further clarification/critique of Kagi and not of you.

        They promote their search engine but their users don’t get to see ads. I don’t know what’s wrong about that.

        What’s wrong is Vlad had just said “That community is 100% responsible for Kagi’s growth as a business through word of mouth (Kagi does no paid advertising)”

        And he should be the first person to know that statement isn’t correct.

        may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

        The problem here is that nobody in this community will recommend a corporation that “may know everything about you but respect your privacy.”

        • When recommending a messager service, common consensus always leans towards the one that knows the least about you.
        • This is because corporations can change or be forced to give up data, which would render the pinkie-promise of “we won’t” moot
        • I’ve seen an argument posted here or on Reddit that Google is technically private because they know about you and won’t sell ads; it’s basically the Kagi line. Basically nobody cares even if it’s true (and it’s turned out to not be true).

        Vlad said “kagi.com” - which doesn’t mention AI or AI tools.

        Maybe not the homepage, but the site itself is very explicit about AI being the point of their project. And if Kagi will change their statements about everything else on a dime, and have such poor views on privacy, why not also follow their own manifesto?

        You can read their pro-AI manifesto on the Kagi.com domain right here.

        You can read a critique of this manifesto and how it talks about you “volunteering” your data to search engines, and other creepy stuff, right here.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
    2·
    9 months ago

    I am suspicious of anything I see being pushed as heavily as Kagi is pushed by it’s alleged users.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
    1·
    9 months ago

    I enjoy kagi as a service that I’ve paid for, but yeah… stuff like this makes it hard to enjoy with a clear conscience.

    I think the op already said this, but at least this shows that a product like this (with a little more focus, transparency, and integrity) could be sustainable.

    • AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yeah kind of, but the CEO needs to learn that not everyone will like their products, you cant convince everyone.

      The person said that they dont want to engage with the discussion, then the CEO should have just let it be.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        2·
        9 months ago

        This is the second CEO to be a weirdo to a random person in the past month. First it was the Tumblr CEO, now it’s the Kagi one.

        Kagi was already in hot water for ignoring its paying customers’ previous complaints, so this whole “I really want to know your opinion, we are a human first company!” thing really sounds disingenuous after the same CEO overruled away all criticism or tried shuffling it away from public channels and onto his much more closed-off Discord.

          • LWD@lemm.ee
            1·
            9 months ago

            The Tumblr (and WordPress and Automattic) CEO, Matt Mullenweg, banned somebody for life over apparently “explicit” Tumblr content, and that got backlash from the LGBT community.

            Instead of shaking it off like an adult,

            • Matt (allegedly) DMed dozens of people,
            • followed the Tumblr user to Twitter to argue there too
            • complained that the Tumblr user had other edgy/explicit usernames

            https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/tumblr-ceo-transphobic-moderation-controversy

            This man’s platform (Wordpress) powers most of the internet and he’s worried about catgirlballsack on Tumblr.

  • wolfruff@pawb.social
    21·
    9 months ago

    Im with Kagi on this. Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public. This person is projecting how fragile their argument is by reacting this way.

    Vlad was doing the right thing discussing it in private first before they probably address this stupid attempt at causing drama. I read all of the shit they posted and it sounds to me like they are nitpicking/strawmanning AI features which are very VERY optional.

    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
      2·
      9 months ago

      Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public

      there’s nothing wrong with that. continuously messaging someone after being told more than once that the recipient doesn’t want to continue the conversation, though? that’s not okay.

      • Vexz@kbin.social
        03·
        9 months ago

        I get that but it’s a dick move by the author of that article to publicly speak bad about a product and then don’t even wanna listen to what that person who made that product has to say to defend it. Especially if there’s some false information that get’s spread by that article. I’m not saying anything written in that article is true or false - just explaining the situation from Vlad’s view.

  • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
    1·
    9 months ago

    Well that sucks… that vlad dude is ehm… weird. I am happy with the service I am getting from Kagi, but such behaviour is not acceptable…

    • Vexz@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

      They allegedly don’t know their user’s search queries. That’s how it’s allegedly private.

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    9 months ago

    Conflicted! Cory Doctorow just endorsed it & I’m way less smart than that person so i usually do what they say :\