Thoughts on Kagi? - eviltoast

I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.

Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.

Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?

  • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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    10 months ago

    I’ve been using it as my primary for quite a while, it’s pretty awesome and the development pace is pretty good.

    I’m not really a fan of the lead guy, some of the comments he’s made on the forums are less than great, but the product is top notch.

      • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Some interesting moderation choices that suggest a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community, a business partnership with Brave, and a really shitty take refusing to add help numbers for self-harm related searches.

        You can get the cliff notes of it from this post and comment to it: https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834

        • wavydotdot@lemmy.worldOP
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          10 months ago

          This made me sad. I actually thought I found the search engine I was looking for and now I get this shit.

        • sudneo@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I know what you are referring to with regards to the LGBTQ+ matter, but the only source is the user who reported it (with a screenshot that did not show anything), the same user who used some completely dishonest and bad faith arguments* to slander the CEO guy. I wouldn’t take that at face value and I have absolutely no problem to see, instead, a reason to moderate their comments.

          * the CEO of kagi has a website with a “best country ranking”, which is just a stupid page with 15 criterias chosen to rank which country is the greatest. The argument was that the guy must be a racist/white suprematist because the top countries for the most part were white (and wealthy. Duh). Apparently they were especially pissed about the fact that he decided to include the Olympic medals pro capite, despite the fact that it’s one of the few metrics in which first world countries were not at the top.

          • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            with a screenshot that did not show anything

            the screenshot shows a thread on Kagi’s Discord that’s been deleted almost immediately after that screenshot has been taken, while other user’s calls to “stop shoving LGBTQ down our throats” have been left up.

            • sudneo@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              The screenshot shows an off-topic comment that complains about other comments being “left up”, and the CEO that answers that nothing has been deleted, in fact (I suppose in regards to the topic). The thread in the screenshot was (going to be) deleted because it’s off-topic, it’s a meta-conversation that doesn’t add anything to the general discussion, if not noise and chaos (and tbh, following long conversation in discord is already terrible as it is).

                • sudneo@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  The second person (I think) referred to the thread in the screenshot when they said “I saw it disappearing live”. I have no problems believing that the guy deleted that thread, it’s an off-topic thread. What I have problem to believe is that the guy specifically deleted comments from queer folks (which is the point of this post). And again, the person who started the Mastodon thread is someone that - in my view - has no credibility at all, considering the completely dishonest way in which they carried out the conversation.

                  Not sure what the screenshot you posted is supposed to prove. He closed a thread on the kagifeedback site asking to move the discussion (if needed) in Kagi Discord, where - in fact - happened (although with very little benefit for anybody). AFAIK it’s not “his personal Discord” server, it’s Kagi’s server, and I believe most of the conversation (including the one in the “incriminating” screenshot) happened in #general. I am really not sure what your point is.

                  Either way, it doesn’t matter what I believe. What I know is that the person making the Mastodon thread is someone in bad faith and with (in my opinion) completely bad takes. Someone who makes such a post, in my opinion is a moron.

                  • LWD@lemm.ee
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                    10 months ago

                    It’s much easier to stifle disagreement and feign objectivity after you silence a publicly accessible conversation and move it to a private Discord server. Discord makes it remarkably easy to censor comments without ever being able to prove they were there.

                    Even if we assume the Kagi CEO is totally blameless, he made a massive optical blunder by deciding to silence public criticism and shift it onto turf he controls even more tightly.

                    If you want to make the case that the two Mastodon users are liars, then you need to prove more than a personal disagreement. And so far, arguing about one of the hardest to define words in the English language is hardly proof.

          • LWD@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            It’s interesting that in your previous month-old comment you mentioned “a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment” from the CEO, which confused me, because the Mastodon thread also includes the content of a comment the CEO tried to scrub.

            But you did write this gem:

            Now, since my mother tongue has the unfortunate responsibility for having coined the term “fascism”, I think I have at least an idea of what it means.

            …appeal to ethnicity is pretty funny

            • sudneo@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              We are talking about the same thread, right?

              https://nyan.lol/@zicklepop/111716010186646210

              This one.

              There is no comment that the “CEO tried to scrub”. There is only a discord screenshot of a meta-conversation about the fact that the user claimed their comment was deleted, and the CEO answers that nothing was deleted to avoid this very same accusation, and then says he will delete this (the meta) thread (because it’s off-topic).

              Not sure what you find funny though, however,

              a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment

              referred to:

              and his response is basically that inclusivity is why there is no innovation in tech anymore. i think he wants to get acquired by 37signals.

              Which is completely arbitrary. Even wanting to read the comment of the CEO with malice, he said “politics”.

              …appeal to ethnicity is pretty funny

              This has nothing to do with ethnicity, it has to do with words and meaning. Calling someone a fascist for such matter is completely bananas and - frankly - disrespectful towards the people who died fighting the actual fascism. The CEO can be an idiot, or a tech bro, but he expressed his views and let others express theirs. This is pretty evident from their forum.

                • sudneo@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  Yeah, that thread linked (https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834) references the same Mastodon thread. I know because I followed all of this few months back.

                  I do think it is super important to discuss whether a tech bro is just making a quick cash grab product in order to get bought out by a larger corporation, though. As seen with the Skiff tech bros.

                  Oh yeah, this is definitely interesting, but…while email is somewhat binding as a service, a search engine is not. Give me 2 minutes and I have changed the default search engine on all my devices away from Kagi. If that will be the case (despite the fact that so far, I have no reason to think it is the case), it will be super easy to move away. I think if I were a Skiff customer without a custom domain, I would still be crying instead.

        • Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone
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          10 months ago

          “ a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community,”

          Are you saying that the GUI doesn’t have a setting for rainbow coloured buttons?