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.
1/
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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/
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.
2/
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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.
2/
I’m sympathetic to Kagi’s dilemma. Brave may well provide useful services to them. And it is impossible to completely avoid engaging with people and companies who do harm in the world; that is our reality.
We can’t always disengage. What we •can• do, at a bare minimum, is think carefully about how we engage, and make wise decisions (as businesses and as individuals) that take into account our indirect impact on the world.
Again, these community concerns merit a thoughtful response.
3/
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I’m sympathetic to Kagi’s dilemma. Brave may well provide useful services to them. And it is impossible to completely avoid engaging with people and companies who do harm in the world; that is our reality.
We can’t always disengage. What we •can• do, at a bare minimum, is think carefully about how we engage, and make wise decisions (as businesses and as individuals) that take into account our indirect impact on the world.
Again, these community concerns merit a thoughtful response.
3/
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/
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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/
My dude, politics were deeply intertwined with tech long before I wrote my first line of code back in 1982. You don’t get to opt out. That choice isn’t even on the table. You interact with humans, you interact with politics.
Vlad’s post is a historically ignorant, pants-on-head-stupid answer to a serious question. When I read it, I hear, “We’re not ethically mature enough to think about our social responsibility, so we’ve given ourselves permission to take no responsibility at all.”
5/
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My dude, politics were deeply intertwined with tech long before I wrote my first line of code back in 1982. You don’t get to opt out. That choice isn’t even on the table. You interact with humans, you interact with politics.
Vlad’s post is a historically ignorant, pants-on-head-stupid answer to a serious question. When I read it, I hear, “We’re not ethically mature enough to think about our social responsibility, so we’ve given ourselves permission to take no responsibility at all.”
5/
I mean, at •best• that’s what I hear. At worst, I suspect that Kagi’s leadership is sympathetic to (or fully in bed with) the right-wing politics of Brave, and is using a claim of being apolitical as cover for their own politics. That would be par for the course when somebody gives this sort of “I’m staying out of politics” excuse for their politically charged actions.
6/
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I mean, at •best• that’s what I hear. At worst, I suspect that Kagi’s leadership is sympathetic to (or fully in bed with) the right-wing politics of Brave, and is using a claim of being apolitical as cover for their own politics. That would be par for the course when somebody gives this sort of “I’m staying out of politics” excuse for their politically charged actions.
6/
Which is it? Doesn’t matter.
When I give a company access to all of my searches, I’m giving them an •extraordinary• degree of trust. Earning that trust from me requires a keen ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility that never shrinks into the shadows and says “Not our problem! Not our responsibility!” when market forces raise ethical questions.
I want a company with a moral compass and a spine.
7/
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Which is it? Doesn’t matter.
When I give a company access to all of my searches, I’m giving them an •extraordinary• degree of trust. Earning that trust from me requires a keen ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility that never shrinks into the shadows and says “Not our problem! Not our responsibility!” when market forces raise ethical questions.
I want a company with a moral compass and a spine.
7/
I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.
Who is that company? Not Google. Not Microsoft.
I’d hoped it might be Kagi.
Nope.
8/
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I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.
Who is that company? Not Google. Not Microsoft.
I’d hoped it might be Kagi.
Nope.
8/
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
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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
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Not familiar with Kagi, but the ethical dilemma is old as the ages. Something is developed with the best of intentions, or at least marketed as such. It gains traction, and the idealism of the founders is tested over and over again with progressively greater incentive to join the dark side. Eventually the magnitude of the payday is just too great, the deal is struck, and "don't be evil" goes out the window.
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@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
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Thanks for this thoughtful post. Not familiar with Kagi, but the ethical dilemma is old as the ages. Something is developed with the best of intentions, or at least marketed as such. It gains traction, and the idealism of the founders is tested over and over again with progressively greater incentive to join the dark side. Eventually the magnitude of the payday is just too great, the deal is struck, and "don't be evil" goes out the window.
@mastodonmigration For me, the Brave question was only a question — but the ineptitude of this response suggests to me that either (1) the founder is not ready to play with the grown-ups or (2) the founder is secretly terrible. At this point, even if they pulled the Brave relationship, I’d still be out. This is not somebody ready for prime time.
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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 Thanks for the explanation. I was trialing Kagi, but not convinced of the balance between gains and extra effort. If now the gains vanish …
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@CptSuperlative I’m fully satisfied with macOS Safari for browsing, but have considered Vivaldi as a replacement for Chrome for using GSuite (which I always keep sandboxed in a separate browser).
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@inthehands Thanks for the explanation. I was trialing Kagi, but not convinced of the balance between gains and extra effort. If now the gains vanish …
@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.
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@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands FWIW I'm sticking with Firefox and DuckDuckGo. But I am dreading the most likely inevitable decline in quality of both.
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@mastodonmigration For me, the Brave question was only a question — but the ineptitude of this response suggests to me that either (1) the founder is not ready to play with the grown-ups or (2) the founder is secretly terrible. At this point, even if they pulled the Brave relationship, I’d still be out. This is not somebody ready for prime time.
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.
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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 welp, rip kagi, back to searching for search engines again
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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.)
