For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
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@inthehands Sorry, I don’t think such a company exists or can exist. Companies are not people. Companies are entities that do what they are legally permitted to do for the sole purpose of maximizing profit for shareholders and enduring to do it again and again. That is their obligation and it dominates over any other concern. It is a grave mistake to expect human virtue from a corporation. They will ignore ethical requirements not enshrined in law or market forces.
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Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
I had been considering kagi very loosely but it sounds like another "pro status quo company pretending to be neutral".
Very informative thread! Thanks!
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For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi. Its search results are…fine, no worse than others, and it’s ad-free, stated privacy as a primary goal, and seemed to have a better ethical sense than its competitors.
Or so I hoped.
1/
@inthehands @nicklockwood Well shit.
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What I found was _not_ a thoughtful, careful response. What I found was the founder of Kagi saying:
“Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more.”
Reconsider your partnership with Brave - Kagi Feedback
Brave, as you know, is led by Brendan Eich. s homophobia is so disgusting that he was forced to resign as the leader...
(kagifeedback.org)
Well shit. That is the reddest of red flags.
4/
@inthehands I don't like this response, it's naive, but it is indeed native to treat brave differently than these other search providers in this thread. Brendan Eich is a sore spot for many who liked and supported Mozilla at the time his political donation preferences got out, and for good reason, but I wouldn't call the uncaring facade of a billion dollar company that supports pride as long as it's convenient for their PR department and is in alignment with general social sentiment (but not an inch further) ethically superior to that. There's simply too much capitalism involved.
I wish they had just said that instead of pretending there's no politics here at all.
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Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
@inthehands I discovered kagi not too long ago, and was really happy.
Now I'm not, and wonder what I'm going to use for search now...
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@inthehands I don't like this response, it's naive, but it is indeed native to treat brave differently than these other search providers in this thread. Brendan Eich is a sore spot for many who liked and supported Mozilla at the time his political donation preferences got out, and for good reason, but I wouldn't call the uncaring facade of a billion dollar company that supports pride as long as it's convenient for their PR department and is in alignment with general social sentiment (but not an inch further) ethically superior to that. There's simply too much capitalism involved.
I wish they had just said that instead of pretending there's no politics here at all.
@inthehands related recommendation for anyone needing to freshen up on what is sometimes thought of as "no politics".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtCV421T52s
(the best opening of any jacob geller video)
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@doritc Yeah. I mean, even more than search quality, what I was paying for was trust. With that damaged, it’s not worth paying for.
@inthehands Same here …
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@phiofx@hachyderm.io @inthehands
Yup. In theory Europe is better that way (GDPR). But even then, and even pretending the law was better (eh, it's fine), the enforcement lacks teeth.
Like, do we truly think Facebook isn't cheating on GDPR every place the regulators can't easily check? (Google is probably only cheating in a relative few more-strategic places.)
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@flowerpot @inthehands @ChildlessBambino@mastodon.green Been using it for a few months. Works a lot better for me than DDG (possibly because I live in Europe)
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@inthehands Sorry, I don’t think such a company exists or can exist. Companies are not people. Companies are entities that do what they are legally permitted to do for the sole purpose of maximizing profit for shareholders and enduring to do it again and again. That is their obligation and it dominates over any other concern. It is a grave mistake to expect human virtue from a corporation. They will ignore ethical requirements not enshrined in law or market forces.
@meltedcheese @inthehands the legal requirement to maximize profit over everything only applies to publically traded companies btw. If you're not on the stock market the goal is whatever the owner decides.
Granted yes, the incentive is still there and basically we can't have nice things under capitalism. -
@mia@void.rehab @inthehands@hachyderm.io we just suffer through duckduckgo
@dangerdyke @mia @inthehands same
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@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands Haven't seen it in replies, so here's a search engine I use: https://ecosia.org
They are based in Germany, use search results from Bing and Google and plant trees for your searches. There are ads, but I found them very unitrusive and you have an option to turn off Google's cookies. The search results are, in my experience, comparable to Google, but with less pushy "ad" results -
@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands @CptSuperlative Qwant?
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Think you are right. No idea about this particular case, but imagine the founder(s) to be a technical sort, maybe kind of unsophisticated, perhaps young. Coded up a cool thing and got it going. Now, things change. They start to be approached by some real sharks who puff them up and tell them how big it could get. They are completely unprepared to play in this league, and boom it's done.
@mastodonmigration @inthehands young and privileged. I always cringe when I see phrases like this, especially as they're usually uttered by white able-bodied heterosexual cis-men. Someone for whom marginalization is an abstract idea rather than a lived reality.
To complain about politics "entering" tech and wishing for it to be "politics-free" is an obscene luxury. For someone marginalized that's in all likelihood not even an option, as our mere existence is already political.
Blergh
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What I found was _not_ a thoughtful, careful response. What I found was the founder of Kagi saying:
“Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more.”
Reconsider your partnership with Brave - Kagi Feedback
Brave, as you know, is led by Brendan Eich. s homophobia is so disgusting that he was forced to resign as the leader...
(kagifeedback.org)
Well shit. That is the reddest of red flags.
4/
@inthehands I just got inspired to meme by this awful statement.
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For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi. Its search results are…fine, no worse than others, and it’s ad-free, stated privacy as a primary goal, and seemed to have a better ethical sense than its competitors.
Or so I hoped.
1/
@inthehands I’ve been on a paid plan with Kagi for a year now but I’m not going to renew. Back to DuckDuckGo, I suppose… There’s a distinct lack of search engines that are just… decent.
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@inthehands I’ve been on a paid plan with Kagi for a year now but I’m not going to renew. Back to DuckDuckGo, I suppose… There’s a distinct lack of search engines that are just… decent.
@inthehands Renewal coming up on Jan 22, so that was impeccable timing. Cancelled
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@inthehands thanks for that. I was already a little disappointed that they were engaging the current hype cycle with the AI answers thing, but this is a deal breaker.
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What I found was _not_ a thoughtful, careful response. What I found was the founder of Kagi saying:
“Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more.”
Reconsider your partnership with Brave - Kagi Feedback
Brave, as you know, is led by Brendan Eich. s homophobia is so disgusting that he was forced to resign as the leader...
(kagifeedback.org)
Well shit. That is the reddest of red flags.
4/
@inthehands "We don't want politics in XYZ" is just another way of saying "we like the political situation as it is". Always. There is no "politically neutral" model of interaction. What we should promote is a *cosmopolitan* model, where people can express a variety of political views safely. Some views (e.g. those that deny others' rights including the right to their own opinion) should still have consequences, but most should be able to *coexist*.
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@CptSuperlative @inthehands huh? Vivaldi is a browser, and as far as I can tell they don't offer their own search engine.
