For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
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@inthehands welp, rip kagi, back to searching for search engines again
@mia@void.rehab @inthehands@hachyderm.io we just suffer through duckduckgo
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@JessTheUnstill Yup. And…I guess I do consider people’s human rights “political” inasmuch as there are always ways human rights are under threat in any society — and since “politics” is the word for “the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals,” well, then, politics is the word for how we fight to protect (or destroy) those rights. (Similar thoughts to yours from different angle, I think.)
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@CptSuperlative Ah, I just use the super-sophisticated technique of closing tabs all the time and then searching my history in desperation.
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@ben_hr Yeah, same. Bummer.
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@phiofx Yeah. As per upthread, I’m actually quite sympathetic to whatever forces might be pushing them to collaborate with a highly objectionable company. It’s the response that’s the deal-killer. Even more than search quality, what I was paying Kagi for was •trust•. That’s damaged now; these people are at best too immature to be trustworthy. At that point, what am I paying for?!
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@admin Will give it a whirl!
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@ChildlessBambino@mastodon.green Hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks!
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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".
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
(www.youtube.com)
(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?
