For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
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ADDENDUM 1/2: Kagi is apparently now flailing around trying to find a quick and dirty fix for the uproar: “maybe you can disable Brave in your search results or we’ll try to make their services free or something” etc etc.
My deal-killing objection was not actually them using Brave’s services, but rather their •unwillingness to think• about the underlying issues in doing so. I can’t say that this “we’ll let you cover your eyes too” sort of response addresses my concerns at all.
Let's see if you become the bad guy for "politicizing" it. It feels I've been waiting some time to hear this voice expressed, thank you. Even as I blundered through the right-adjacent valley, wondering how all the techies can be OK with this, my response has been typically Gen X, distancing, ironic, witnessing... our choices must lead to another way.
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@valentyn
Valentijn, you’ve really missed the central line of thought of the thread. Slow down. Read better. What specifically do I identify as the reason for canceling service? It’s not “rejecting people.” What is it?@inthehands I think I did understand your concern about ethics well. I'm just not sure I understand... wait, I'm starting to repeat myself here
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ADDENDUM 2/2: A search engine is going to face some of the toughest ethical problems a tech company can face. And they’ll face most of those problems ••out of public sight••.
I’m interested in the people, their thought process, their temperament. How do they engage with ethical questions? Perfection is impossible, but will they at least •try•? Do they have the capacity to try? Do they even give a shit?
Or do they actively •refuse• to give a shit and call that a virtue? Apparently so for Kagi.
Part of why I have always been a (self-serving) proponent of humanities folks in tech - we deal with humans, not machines. I'm glad to have come to the career when it was simple to be a self-taught software person.
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ADDENDUM 1/2: Kagi is apparently now flailing around trying to find a quick and dirty fix for the uproar: “maybe you can disable Brave in your search results or we’ll try to make their services free or something” etc etc.
My deal-killing objection was not actually them using Brave’s services, but rather their •unwillingness to think• about the underlying issues in doing so. I can’t say that this “we’ll let you cover your eyes too” sort of response addresses my concerns at all.
@inthehands
The notion that an independent search engine is supposed to be apolitical is so misguided I unsubscribed. Thanks for pointing this out to me. -
Part of why I have always been a (self-serving) proponent of humanities folks in tech - we deal with humans, not machines. I'm glad to have come to the career when it was simple to be a self-taught software person.
@grechaw Indeed. And I’m a complete weirdo who believes there is zero contradiction in being both a tech person and a humanities person.
(You might enjoy my pinned thread on taking a course about the letters of Paul.)
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@SkipHuffman @realn2s @JessTheUnstill Nothing endures but change and typos.
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@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative
The question that I was asking myself was what is different about the internet today from the internet in the late 90s or early 2000s during the heyday of web rings, and I also asked myself what kind of technologies do we have to update those things in a way that compliments and mitigates the ways that the internet is different today. I'm not a big expert at this kind of design thinking but I wanted to try -
@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative
The question that I was asking myself was what is different about the internet today from the internet in the late 90s or early 2000s during the heyday of web rings, and I also asked myself what kind of technologies do we have to update those things in a way that compliments and mitigates the ways that the internet is different today. I'm not a big expert at this kind of design thinking but I wanted to try@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative is difference between the internet then and now is that the Internet is just a lot bigger and much more diverse so we need tools that will both be able to express the exponentially higher amount of relationship between different nodes and also be easier to use and be more automated. Thinking about how we can harness algorithms and automation and scalable systems for the benefit of humans rather than business is important
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@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative is difference between the internet then and now is that the Internet is just a lot bigger and much more diverse so we need tools that will both be able to express the exponentially higher amount of relationship between different nodes and also be easier to use and be more automated. Thinking about how we can harness algorithms and automation and scalable systems for the benefit of humans rather than business is important
@alter_kaker @SkipHuffman @CptSuperlative Agreed, it’s a really interesting family of questions.
I think — and this is speaking with my software engineer hat on! — that the biggest and deepest questions here are about the human relationships: Who knows who? Who decides what? Who shares what? •Some• parts of that can’t / shouldn’t be automated. With clarity around that, tech can help reduce friction! But the fundamental system scaling problems here are social.
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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 Goddammit. This is DHH-level of "it's somebody else's problem".
️I can't keep using Hey with a clear conscience.
I just started using Orion and Kagi, after giving up on Safari and Google/DDG.
Everything is shit.
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@inthehands Not Duck?
@wndlb @inthehands DDG is just Bing now, right?
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@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands @CptSuperlative DDG is Bing under the hood?
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@inthehands @CptSuperlative DDG is Bing under the hood?
@elight
Yes, with (theoretically) better privacy. -
@alter_kaker @SkipHuffman @CptSuperlative Agreed, it’s a really interesting family of questions.
I think — and this is speaking with my software engineer hat on! — that the biggest and deepest questions here are about the human relationships: Who knows who? Who decides what? Who shares what? •Some• parts of that can’t / shouldn’t be automated. With clarity around that, tech can help reduce friction! But the fundamental system scaling problems here are social.
@inthehands @SkipHuffman @CptSuperlative I agree. So what are the social scaling problems, and how can technology help address them while leaving humans in the drivers seat?
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@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative so one issue is how is technology able to encourage/enable creativity. I'd say that the other side is how can it enable discovery, both social and informational
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@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative so one issue is how is technology able to encourage/enable creativity. I'd say that the other side is how can it enable discovery, both social and informational
@SkipHuffman @inthehands @CptSuperlative for example, what you said above abt writing .md post with many references. I'd like a system where I can not only read the post with the reference, but also the ones that are referenced: here's a reaction to this. This way I can discover both additional perspectives and association surf, and new people. There was something similar in WP years ago with pingbacks but it was ugly and inconvenient to use, interspersed among the comments and with no context.
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@donaldball
Exactly. I don’t think they understand what they’re selling, what their customers had been paying for. -
@SkipHuffman @realn2s @JessTheUnstill Nothing endures but change and typos.
@inthehands @SkipHuffman @JessTheUnstill
and corrected 
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@inthehands I just got inspired to meme by this awful statement.
@morix @inthehands
I did some digging and decided Kagi is a KGB / FSB operation. If you don't mind my "unhinged" ranting: -
@mastodonmigration @inthehands He's not young. Based on his bio, he's in the 45-50 age range.
"I started my journey in tech in 1983 with C-64 and Elite"
Vladimir Prelovac
Vladimir Prelovac - Founder/CEO Kagi Inc. Builder of user-centric products and a dad of three.
(vladimir.prelovac.com)
He's run several different businesses over the past couple of decades.
He is not young and unsophisticated.
@unlambda @mastodonmigration @inthehands
Further Reading:
