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Kagi doubles down on paid Brave partnership despite losing at least 0.5% of users in 1 day. And invoking Godwin's Law (kagifeedback.org)

submitted 10 months ago by flumph@programming.dev to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

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"Should we not be buying VW, BMW, Siemens and Bayer technology and products today because they participated in holocaust and directly collaborated with Hitler?" -- CEO of Kagi when given feedback re: Brave partnership

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[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

their CEO also moderates the discussion on Kagi's Discord. he's been removing criticism by queer folks, while - the last time I've checked before I've left their group - keeping replies like "stop shoving LGBTQ down our throats".

https://nyan.lol/@zicklepop/111716138453426218

edit: also their response regarding a request to add a "don't do it" widget to suicide searches basically boils down to "but if we make a moral choice now, we'll have to do more moral choices in the future!", which is... suboptimal. https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probably-have-a-dont-do-that-widget-like-google/

[–] hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 27 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Ah fuck, I've been using Kagi but of course their CEO is a reich-wing asshat.

Anybody know of any other options? I'm not going back to Google.

[–] Brutticus@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ive been having pretty good time with searxng

[–] hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you self-hosting or using a public instance?

[–] Aradia@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 months ago

It's much better is you use a public instance as your results will be harder to be tracked: https://searx.space/ choice your favorite one here

[–] Sheeple@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

DuckDuckGo is honestly a reliable one

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe not too helpful, but I've been using startpage for years now and it still seems like the best option for me. It is google-based but at least private.

[–] hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'd like to specifically avoid using straight-up Google as a source, proxied or not. Most of the smaller engines do seem to use Google for at least a part of their results, but for me that's preferable to having to completely rely on it since the results are mostly not very good

[–] Deceptichum@kbin.social 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Was thinking about biting the bullet and getting Kagi, but this is sign enough not to let alone the OP.

[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 months ago

Same here. Looks like I'll be staying with DDG for a while yet.

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

These people are obsessed with things being shoved down throats

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

the FOMO is real

[–] dmnknf@lemmy.ml 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wow, this topic in the edit is bad, and I wasn't aware of it. Just canceled my subscription. Now I have until 14/01 to choose an alternative.

[–] Aradia@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://searx.space/ works pretty well.

[–] Whom@midwest.social 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The best I can say is that it technically does the job, just slowly and not particularly well. There really isn't anything which even approaches the search quality and featureset of Kagi. I don't even have the strongest opinion on working with Brave even though they're clearly awful given how monstrous both Google and Microsoft are (who are both part of the core foundation of their search), but their approach to this whole situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I turned off auto-renewal of my subscription but I really hope they take a step back and realize how much goodwill they're destroying for a significant part of their userbase so I can resubscribe. There's no suitable replacement.

[–] Aradia@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For me, it is doing a good job, and it's pretty fast. I think in the past was slower and with many issues, but it improved a lot. I never tried Kagi and I don't think it's rational to "login" and identify myself to be able to get results, even if it's working better, everyone should be able to get good results without needing to pay.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

everyone should be able to get good results without needing to pay.

Until this stuff is funded with public money, it's not really doable for such a compute and storage intense task.

I am perfectly OK with paying for good software, until then. I also agree with the principle of aligning interests of users and the search provider by having the users pay. Other models (ads, sponsoring) creates incentive to favour those who pay. The other reasonable model is donation, that can work potentially, but it has its problems.

[–] Aradia@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But https://searx.space/ is like Lemmy, you can donate to those instances to help them to keep it on. It is not really a search engine, so the power usage isn't that big, it uses other search engines to get the results, the difference is that the search engines like Google, DDG, Bing and etc don't know who did those requests. The quality isn't bad neither, but I can't really say the difference as I never tried Kagi. 🤔

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In fact it's not comparable, because this is a metasearch engine. Kagi has quite many unique features and besides that it's great in surfacing small websites (for which it mostly uses its own crawler) and downranking pages full of tracking. They are just different and the Kagi model is the most reasonable, in my opinion, for what it does (search engine).

[–] Sheeple@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint. Kagi is run by a fascist which was the point of this comment chain

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I saw no evidence of that.

Looking at the "evidence" discussed, I saw three points:

The refusal to disengage with Brave. It's totally possible to disagree with his position, but the overall motivations were legit and no "fascist" attitude was shown. Users screaming "cancel culture" were shut down

there was clear intention to discuss, and it has always been done in a respectful way.

The refusal to support the widget that prompts for suicide hotlines. Even here, I personally agree with the motivation provided, but it doesn't matter, it does not have anything to do with being a fascist. Moreover, the discussion about that was quite lengthy and definitely showed a good-faith engagement from their side.
Finally, the most ridiculous of all, which was part of the mastodon thread linked. Some user claims that "queer people" were getting censored in Discord (we have no evidence except for a private exchange which seems off-topic) and that https://greatcountry.org/ is apparently a proof that the creator (CEO of Kagi) is a white supremacist, because the countries on the top of the list are mostly white countries. I won't even go into details in this one, because it's such an idiotic statement that qualifies way more the user making this claim, which shows -in my opinion- a complete lack of a good faith and the desire to really find any angle to disqualify the person (possibly due to lacking ability to discuss the arguments). The other "proof" (the thread has 3 posts) is a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment, which even includes an addendum that takes the distance from this statement. The guy mentioned that "politics into tech is the reason there is no innovation", and the Mastodon user rephrases it as "inclusion is the reason [...]", which is a completely different statement (it is possible that's what the guy meant, but that's not what he said).

If this is anybody's definition of fascism, then I personally consider that person's opinion on fascism completely irrelevant. Now, since my mother tongue has the unfortunate responsibility for having coined the term "fascism", I think I have at least an idea of what it means. It means -in a wider sense- discrimination, suppression of minorities and violence as a mean to shut down opposition. I see no such thing in this context, and if you do, I think it's time you provide some evidence for this claim, because just name-calling random people fascist on the internet doesn't help anybody, and it doesn't help in particular due to the fact that waters down the term and reduces its meaning.

[–] natecox@programming.dev 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

God damn it.

I am a paying subscriber to Kagi because the search results are excellent and there are no ads, so of course you show me a thread on “we should maybe add a small message to suicidal users telling them there is help for them” which then reads like a truth-social propaganda thread, filled to the brim with “helping people is a slippery slope!!!! muh freedoms!!” arguments.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago

This is something I really don't get.

it is unclear whether anybody in history has ever been helped by that kind of message.
it is kind of a religious morality that suicide needs to be prevented and that if someone wants to do it, it's because they are not in control. This doesn't mean it's wrong in absolute sense, but it's very opinionated.
realistically speaking, there is no need to "search" how to suicide.
trying to conclude what you want to do, rather than what you want to know (I.e. search) is IMHO exactly against what kagi's idea is. It's a service that does only what it is asked for, and doesn't try to "know" you, as a customer or user. No text editor prompts you to suicide hotlines by analyzing the text you are writing, and we would consider it extremely weird if it did. However, with search we get used to the tool trying to guess what we want to do because Google does know you, I think the beauty of Kagi is going in another direction.

But let's assume that all the previous points are invalid, and - for a greater good - it's worth displaying a message when someone is looking at suicide-related topics. What about "how to kill someone", " how to rape", "how to [...]" with the hundreds of things that are universally considered wrong? And even worse, what about the thousands of things that are not universally considered wrong, but that some group thinks are wrong? "How to change sex", " how to blow up a pipeline", etc.?

This I think was their point in that conversation, and I agree with. The moment you try to interpret what the user wants to do with the info they ask you, and you decide to assume responsibility to change the user's mind, there are hundreds or thousands of instances in which users or groups of users will demand you take a position for what they believe is right. Instead I think a search engine should stop at providing information relevant to your query and not assume what you want to do with it. It's not its place to correct people's behavior or educate people. The public education system should do that, the healthcare system should ensure people have the right support. A search engine is (or better, should be) basically like a librarian, or a library index, you ask what you want and they point you in that direction. They don't try to guess why you are looking for books about torture or environmental activism.

This at least is my perspective.

[–] hersh@literature.cafe 3 points 10 months ago

As a Kagi subscriber, I've been very happy with their transparency in general. The feedback site is open to the public and Vlad and other staff members regularly engage in conversation about possible future features, limitations, and even business decisions in the Discord. It's been refreshing.

...which makes the response to this issue all the more frustrating and disappointing.

I think Vlad's comments in the original feedback thread were fair enough, but then later, in the Discord, I saw a lot of "let's move this to a private chat". They even changed their General channel to "slow mode" to prevent live conversations as this topic became hot. Now I see they were also deleting threads?! Ugh. That's not transparent at all. Not what I expected based on my previous experience with Kagi.

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago

Well, I was giving him a few days to backpedal but it seems like he's not going to do that. There goes my subscription, back to ddg I guess. Since they are supposed to be 100% subscription funded (they still are, right?), this is one of the few companies where that hopefully might actually have a noticeable effect if enough people care about it.

edit: also their response regarding a request to add a “don’t do it” widget to suicide searches basically boils down to “but if we make a moral choice now, we’ll have to do more moral choices in the future!”, which is… suboptimal. https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probably-have-a-dont-do-that-widget-like-google/

Meh, good for them tbh. I find these messages to be incredibly patronizing and somehow I doubt you can find a single person who will say "google posting the suicide number has made me reconsider killing myself"

[–] HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago

Reading about the suicide thing: I might try kagi again this year. This is the exact type of software I want. It should only perform its intended function (returning relevant results to any query) and not try to influence me into following someone else's moralisations.

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

"Should we not be buying VW, BMW, Siemens and Bayer technology and products today because they participated in holocaust and directly collaborated with Hitler?"

No actually, you shouldn't. Thanks for asking.

[–] Deceptichum@kbin.social 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Volkswagen was started by Hitler. It was designed to sell affordable cars to public. It actually ran at a loss during this period.

After the war the British turned it into the commercial entity it is today.

I’d argue Volkswagen is freed of its original form, when it was effectively gutted and rebuilt by the British.

Either way, buy a second hand car. Win for the environment and helps cut into corporate profits.

[–] DreamerofDays@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is also freed from its original form by being nearly eighty years removed.

I don’t have the time to stay angry forever, let alone against an organisation several generations removed from its foundational sins.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

There's of course valid reasons to boycott VW but that's for another topic ;)

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee -5 points 10 months ago

The new vw electric car wasn't on my list of potential cars to get because it was out of my price range. Now I found another reason not to get it. Totally forgot they produced for Nazi germany

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 15 points 10 months ago

It sounds like they have rewritten their response.

Basically it looks like they get search results by combining results from other sources like Google and Yandex. Brave has a public API, so it's not a "partnership". It's just adding another search source, like using Searx to combine a bunch of results into one result feed.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Is he saying that Brave ceo is comparable to Hitler... :)

Anyway, I'm staying with Kagi. People who search for perfect companies will search forever, and probably keep using Google while they do.

[–] heygooberman@lemmy.today 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I am no fan of Brave, but is there a way we can configure our Kagi preferences to exclude results from Brave Search? I think SearXNG allows for that. Under SearXNG preferences, there's an Engines tab, and under that, I can configure which search engines to enable and return results for my search. I haven't found anything like that on Kagi yet, but if anyone knows of a way to do it, please share.

[–] kzhe@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago

There will be according to the Discord but they haven't changed their attitude.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

It seems like Kagi's issues run deeper than the affiliation with Brave.

[–] ineffable@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Does your quote above actually appear anywhere on that page (or did it at some point) because I can't find it?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 7 points 10 months ago

It looks like the response was rewritten. It basically says they combine results from various public sources, and have recently added Brave via the public Brave API. It sounds like it's not a partnership, just adding redundancy by having another search result source.

[–] Gallardo994@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I honestly don't get the idea of an outrage specifically right here and right now. I do understand why people may have issues with Kagi but only now? Kagi has also been using Yandex as its search backend for quite a while and I don't think anyone gave a crap, considering all the things happening in the world. And now adding Brave is suddenly "I am not paying you anymore"? Am I missing something?

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

And before Yandex, Google - which they use since the beginning, and which it makes also clear that using the services of a company is at the moment a necessary evil, and does not mean in any way endorsing the values (or lack thereof...) of that company.

But apparently some people are really tunnel visioning on some specific issues and looking at them from a short term perspective only.

Being political I would say that this is an unfortunate result of the lack of a strong collective movement in the left, which leads to people looking mostly at individual problems but not at collective problems, because these seem overwhelming and potentially destabilizing for the status quo.

[–] kzhe@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago

They responded with some stuff (allowing users to opt out of Brave results/paying Brave) but it wasn't enough and their attitude hasn't changed. I want to leave but... nothing is as good enough. Keyboard navigable UI, better results, and easy custom bangs as well as the whole DDG bang library are amazing.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Dogwin's law: Anyone who uses Godwins law is outing themselves as a nazi and should not be taken seriously.

[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That person is really grasping at straws with the whole "the CEO is also a racist fascist" tangent by linking the Greatest Country website.

[–] Sheeple@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Scroll up. Another person posted evidence of him being a fascist

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