• jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    0·
    3 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·
      3 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.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
    0·
    3 months ago

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

      • alansuspect@aussie.zone
        0·
        3 months ago

        I’m still trying to understand searxng, does it start with nothing and build up its index each time you search? Will your results be rubbish for a while?

      • capital@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Open a search app to the public? So their searches come from my IP address? No fucking way, unless I’m missing something.

      • Kuvwert@lemm.ee
        0·
        3 months ago

        My host-fu is weak and the uptime is terrivle right now… Trying to figure out why the container just crashed randomly

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
    0·
    3 months ago

    I’m still considering giving it a try. I’ve been using the free perplexity app to do all my searching with recently and that’s worked pretty well, but not perfect.

    • Vexz@kbin.social
      0·
      3 months ago

      Just try it. You can always cancel your subscription if you don’t like it (or just pay once without subscribing). I’ve been using it for half a year now and absolutely love it.

    • Empathy [he/him]@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 months ago

      I’ve been using both Perplexity and Kagi for searching things, and it’s working out pretty well for me. The main thing that I find Kagi useful for is filtering to Fediverse results (which tends to be mostly Lemmy threads).

      It’s pretty expensive though…

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    0·
    3 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
      0·
      3 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
        0·
        3 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.

  • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
    0·
    3 months ago

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

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I use it primarily because of the fact that I can pay with cryptocurrency and I wish to support more companies that take cryptocurrency directly. I do wish it were Monero instead of Bitcoin, but since I can just do an instant swap to convert from one to the other, it’s at least okay. Proton is the same way.

    • dogzilla@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Just wanted to let you know that I am starting a new business selling bagged air. I accept Crypto! $1000 annual fee for unlimited air.

  • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
    0·
    3 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
      0·
      3 months ago

      To me it’s understandable. Imagine you start a project like this that grows over the years and you even have some employees after a while. Now someone writes an article about your project with accusations that are wrong (at least in your mind). Wouldn’t you be pissed either? At least I can’t imagine anyone who could just ignore that.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s barely a blog that was barely reformatted from the nearly inaccessible Gemini protocol. It’s a glorified Lemmy post. If that’s an article, then I’m a journalist and I want my Pulitzer

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

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

  • wolfruff@pawb.social
    0·
    3 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
      0·
      3 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? that’s not okay.

      • Vexz@kbin.social
        0·
        3 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.

        • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
          0·
          3 months ago

          that article

          it’s a post on a personal blog of a person on the internet. a blog post. not an article.

          • corgi@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            Personal blog on a public Internet is kind of an oxymoron.

            The blog post is close enough to an article.

          • Vexz@kbin.social
            0·
            3 months ago

            Blog post or article - whatever. The effect is the same: It’s on the internet, people read it and get influenced. Just because I picked the wrong word doesn’t kill my point. I’m sure you get what I meant.

    • Vexz@kbin.social
      0·
      3 months ago

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

  • Affidavit@aussie.zone
    0·
    3 months ago

    TBH, OP sounds like a bit of an entitled douche.

    In their blog post they complained about lack of transparency and noted numerous issues with Kagi that caused them to lose faith in the company. The CEO personally responds to explain themselves (i.e. make things more transparent) and OP sticks their fingers in their ears and acts liked they’re a victim because the CEO attempts service recovery.

    I’ve made public complaints about companies before. I wish I received such tailored and personalised responses.

    • Dirk Darkly@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      3 months ago

      I haven’t seen many public diatribes against Kagi, but the ones I have seem to be like this person. They complain very publicly based on their perception of Vlad, spend their days in Discord fomenting drama (which seems like something only children should be doing) and are so fragile that they think getting measured emails from someone they went after publicly is a form of harrassment. It’s absurd.

      I can only hope this was written by a teenager, otherwise it’s a pretty rough way to live as an adult.

      • Affidavit@aussie.zone
        0·
        3 months ago

        After reading your comment, my calling the OP an ‘entitled douche’ was not the best response. I remember the fragility of being a teenager, and even being a young adult… While unlikely, if the blog’s author does come across these comments, I would rather they take a moment to consider things from Vlad’s/Kagi’s perspective rather than just take my comment as a personal attack.

    • macattack@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      Did we read the same article? His responses to GDPR were very concerning, and I say that as an American.

      • tjhart85@kbin.social
        0·
        3 months ago

        Right?! Super easy to be “privacy focused” when you just flat out refuse to acknowledge anything as personally identifiable information!

      • Affidavit@aussie.zone
        0·
        3 months ago

        I agree with you. I wasn’t referring to the actual contents so much as OP’s attitude about the e-mails from the CEO. I think Kagi could benefit from hiring, or at least consulting, with specialists in the field to better define their position. It’s clear that OP has legitimate concerns.

    • SexyVetra@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      You wish the CEO of a company would harass you?

      You wish a CEO would give general denials and the same non-answers you see in a comment thread while pretending to engage with you in good faith?

      Fuck off, the CEO gave no new info or perspectives and just showed himself to be the asshole that recent emerging evidence had been showing he was.

      • capital@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Jesus. How do you function if an email constitutes harassment?

        I get “harassed” daily by hundreds of spammers. I just don’t reply or give it another thought. Things OP could have done.

          • Affidavit@aussie.zone
            0·
            3 months ago

            Sure, why not? Though please don’t spread it around, I’m currently under deep cover pretending to be an Australian who frequently comments on Australian news and is registered with an Australian-themed instance.

            It’s all part of my evil plan to have the first multinational company with their global headquarters in Antarctica.

    • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zone
      0·
      3 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