11mo ago

The whole internet loves Kagi, a lovely paid search engine that can find things! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the CEO is an unhinged narcissist who will harangue you in email

Attached: 4 images As many of you know, I posted recently about my experiences and outlook on Kagi, the paid search engine. It's gotten some positive press recently, ironically right after I made my blog post about why I no longer liked or trusted it. This blog post was called "Why I Lost Faith I...

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note: tech sociopath apologists in this thread will be removed and banned for everyone's best interests
edit: or just acting like a pointless dipshit. jfc you people
- Can I ask a sincere question? whats a tech sociopath apologist, could you demonstrate an example?
  Again, im sincerely genuinely asking
  
  Someone who takes it on themselves to act as apologist for the words/actions of tech sociopaths
  Often seen as “weird nerds coming to defense of $x” (such as musk, or in this case the kagi dudebro)

Can I sincerely ask what we're supposed to use instead?
Kagi has given me the best search experience ive had in at least a decade, I'm not going back to the enshittification engine, and everything else is just bing in fancy wrapping paper. Is there something else like Kagi? Is there something like DDG or Searx that arent just slightly better bing?
- Also looking for answers. I've been a Kagi convert for 5 months now and it has absolutely saved me time and effort.
  I was looking at Perplexity but it isn't exactly the same.
- Feel entirely free to use Kagi, just remember that it's run by an idiot and could blow up at any moment.
  
  Apologies, my question wasn't rhetorical, I was genuinely looking for suggestions. I don't want to use kagi if this is who is running it... BUT all the alternatives that I'm personally aware of are not options for replacement.

- I'm in a forum where some person claims that the sealion is actually the reasonable one.
  It's proof to me that this throwaway comic is such a good summary for certain online behavior that there's an entire subculture built around trying to subvert it.
  (also Wondermark is great in general)

Copy-pasting the alt-text from one of the screenshots because I can't be assed to type it out myself:
Discord convo from 07/15/22, Vlad: people who really need anonymity are very rare. Probably less than a 100 in the entire world. Definitely not typical Kagi users. Unless they are criminals, in which case we don't care they don't have full anonymity (nor we want them as customers)
yikes, double yikes and triple yikes.
I guess he doesn't care to help women find a safe way to have an abortion in 14 out of 50 US states (source), for starters. Nor to help the doubtlessly more-than-100 queer folk in places that outlaw homosexuality.
Or maybe he's such a genius that he knows how to keep them safe without actually keeping them anonymous - and in that case, he should start selling such a technique as its own product /s

Seeing how successful Kagi is when run by someone who actively sets their own money on fire for no reason almost makes me want to try and start a search engine company. I mean I couldn't do it any worse right? And there is a market for it.

I've never had anothee CEO mansplain his company to me
🤣
Slayed me.
I haven't paid Kagi much attention up to this point, so I'm coming in cold to this. But gawd Vlad (makes himself) sound like a huge dork.

The whole internet loves Kagi
Lol no
Also Kagi is a glorified Google front end.
- Also Kagi is a glorified Google front end.
  The fact a glorified Google front end manages to be less shit than Google is a pretty damning indictment of Google, I'll give Kagi that. Quoting Cory Doctorow, gratuitous italics and all:
  The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

I literally learnt about Kagi like a week ago from a Cory Doctorow's post. I was like oh, cool, someone there to fight google.
- Ah man, same. Thought I'd give it a go after reading about if from Cory...
  Honestly, for what I search for, DDG is sufficient, and it's not gonna hassle me about subscriptions.
  What I'd really like to find is something like a pihole for search, where you have your blocklist, cache of things you've searched already (your own mini search engine?), and then a fallback engine (DDG, bing, Google, whatever) for things it doesn't already know.
  I dunno. Search and AI botshit is everywhere, and it's gonna keep getting worse. Self-hosting tools seems to be the only way to take control back.
  
  Isn't the DDG guy an asshole as well though?

Removed
I'm just trying to fit in

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