For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
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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.
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@inthehands well shit.
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Kagi recently started using some services provided by Brave, a company run by immensely objectionable people. Kagi community members rightly raised concerns about this.
I was curious to see Kagi’s response. This is a tricky question that requires a thoughtful, careful response. Their response would be telling: not just about the question of Brave, but about their general ethical outlook.
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@inthehands Well damn, I didn’t know Brave was a problem. Boo.
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@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.)
@inthehands @grechaw 100%. User interfaces are about people. Computer security is about people. We build techno-social systems, not just machines, and especially once networks are involved.
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@inthehands @grechaw 100%. User interfaces are about people. Computer security is about people. We build techno-social systems, not just machines, and especially once networks are involved.
@inthehands @grechaw Plus, while traditionally there are lots of autistic people in tech (like me), who have limited social skills ... the converse is that we tend to have lived experience of marginalisation and inaccessible systems.
So yeah, there's politics in tech. Even in everyday design tasks.
See e.g. Recall!
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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.
@inthehands thanks so much for this thread. I came away thinking of a quote I cannot currently remember the attribution for but which goes something like:
"Technology is not inherently good or inherently bad, and neither is it neutral"
Fully agree with your approach of "yes i fully understand that perfection is impossible but what is the standard they are aiming for and what is their general temperament, esp around correction?" Very reasonable to step away from relationships where the other party responds as defensively and with as much visible disinterest in taking responsibility as they did in this anecdote, bc hoooo boy is that rather a parade's worth of red flags
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@inthehands What's most disappointing here is the lack of seeing how this clashes with #Kagi 's supposed mission of "humanizing the web".
You can't do that while pretending ethics aren't part of it. Or by defending your business relationship with someone who denies basic human rights to some.
I think it'd be recoverable for Kagi if they end up revisiting the issue, but right now, I'm disappointed a.f.
@larsmb @inthehands Never used Kagi and never plan to.
Try Quant, Searxng, Startpage, Brave Search. Many options out there.
Brave search being independent with their indexing, rest are whitelables of Google with small self-indexing database. -
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.
@inthehands there are some alternatives at the end of this blog post. What do you use as search engine these days? https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/doubting-your-favorite-web-search-engine/
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@inthehands Well damn, I didn’t know Brave was a problem. Boo.
Oh, the Brave guy is horrid
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Oh, the Brave guy is horrid
@inthehands @MissConstrue
If you want a usable search engine you gotta use something, Google and MSFT are way more horrible than Brave.
Other options are search engines which just use Google and MSFT as whitelables.There are some open source projects out there which are trying to work out decentralized web searching, so they don't need massive infrastructure, but it will be a couple years that they are comparable and useful.
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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.
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@inthehands oh, fuck. Sub cancellation ahoy.
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@inthehands I just got inspired to meme by this awful statement.
@morix inthehandsade an awful statement?
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@morix inthehandsade an awful statement?
@VoxOfGod the toot is in reply to https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707594378406458
In which the founder of the Kagi search engine is quoted as saying “Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more." and the general vibe was this is a huge red flag.
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Oh, the Brave guy is horrid
@inthehands so it appears.
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@larsmb @inthehands Never used Kagi and never plan to.
Try Quant, Searxng, Startpage, Brave Search. Many options out there.
Brave search being independent with their indexing, rest are whitelables of Google with small self-indexing database.@azad @larsmb @inthehands Ah yes, clearly the solution to the ethical concern of Kagi getting into bed with scumbags like Brave is to... use Brave.
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@azad @larsmb @inthehands Ah yes, clearly the solution to the ethical concern of Kagi getting into bed with scumbags like Brave is to... use Brave.
@woe2you @larsmb @inthehands Kagi uses Google not Brave
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@woe2you @larsmb @inthehands Kagi uses Google not Brave
@azad @larsmb @inthehands I strongly recommend you go back and read what started this thread, because you seem to have missed it.
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@inthehands @MissConstrue
If you want a usable search engine you gotta use something, Google and MSFT are way more horrible than Brave.
Other options are search engines which just use Google and MSFT as whitelables.There are some open source projects out there which are trying to work out decentralized web searching, so they don't need massive infrastructure, but it will be a couple years that they are comparable and useful.
@azad @inthehands @MissConstrue that’s where I’ve landed… lesser evil
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@azad @larsmb @inthehands I strongly recommend you go back and read what started this thread, because you seem to have missed it.
@woe2you @larsmb @inthehands my bad, I for sure missed that.
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@azad @larsmb @inthehands I strongly recommend you go back and read what started this thread, because you seem to have missed it.
@woe2you @larsmb @inthehands If only ethical options to look for:
1. Search.disroot.org
2. Mwmble - open source search engine, early stage
3. Mojeek
4. Marginalia
5. There is one I am working on, Rust lang based decentralized search engine. Crawler is working as intended, working on search and indexing part. The roadblock is storage right now, since the crawling database needs 100+ TB easily. In 3 month timeline will release it.
