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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#221

Post by wasmitnetzen »

sithadmin wrote: post #166
jonpurdy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered investing a small amount in them when they were raising a round from customers since I loved the search product so much. I too can't imagine going back to anything else, especially now that I have prioritized and blocked domains set up perfectly and added lenses, and this stuff works across desktop and mobile! I've been mildly regretting not investing up until 5 minute ago when I read about spending 1/3…

The claim that's made in this blog - that Kagi 'owns a t-shirt factory' seems disingenuous, or lazy at best. Kagi's own blog says that instead of going with a major branded merch manufacturer/distributor, they chose to work with a small print shop instead. Nothing about blowing funds on an actual factory/print shop. "Owning a merch operation end to end" just means they're not paying some manufacturer to do production…

Kagi's post says further down that they

> allocate[d] nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts

Though it sounds like they don't actually own "a t-shirt factory", but rather a t-shirt distributor.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#222

Post by thisisjasononhn »

eviks wrote: post #58
WA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vlad is not discussing, he is lecturing. The author of the blog post seems right. Vlad defends his position "lol email is not PII" repeatedly, despite being obviously and completely wrong. He has no understanding that it doesn't matter that a user could enter fake information. His business collects email addresses, which is a process. Under GDPR, this process must be documented, users must be given their data on requ…

he explicitly said in his email that "Personal emails are PII.", so how is that a defence of his previous position?

Lori is a she, not a he.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#223

Post by thisisjasononhn »

iowahansen wrote: post #23

Happy Kagi user here. I'm gladly paying $25 per month because of all their AI features, which work well for me overall. Yes, I could set up API keys on OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Mistral and get a similar experience for less, but I prefer the convenience of their interface and have clean search results bundled into the experience. I will continue to recommend them and hope that T-Shirt becomes available soon.

Or you could spend $25 a month on a dedicated server and run SearxNG or Yacy? Good lord what an excessive amount of money that is to search the web...

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#224

Post by rdl »

I use them and none of this stuff really matters; they basically have deep pockets available to them and in the current operating model can continue indefinitely.

I'd love to see more focus on their own search engine/results, as well as technical means of ensuring anonymity/unlinkability within their infrastructure, but they're well worth the $250/yr for a pro subscription today.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#226

Post by prh8 »

From this and other things, Vlad has seemed to have a heavy Elon Musk vibe, which is unfortunate.

My partner works in mental healthcare. There are absolutely more than 100 people who need anonymity. Far more than 100 people who have patients show up at their residence with bad intentions. I think men are also more predisposed to think that "most people" don't have anything to worry about with their personal safety.

All I want is a search engine that

1. ignores junk 2. allows me to up/down/pin rank certain sites 3. efficiently gets me to what I'm looking for

Kagi was that, and still mostly is, but all the AI stuff is pretty distracting, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to be willing to support a company with a good piece of tech but bad human leadership.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#227

Post by emushack »

I really don't understand why people are so upset about the T-shirts. Like in the grand scheme of things, who cares? If I invested money (I didn't) in Kagi, I would expect some of that money to be spent on marketing. Marketers often do experiments, some of which go well, and others that don't. Only time tells.

This take feels more like being upset about one individual's (Vlad) personal opinions about privacy and politics. But in my opinion, it fails to realize that assigning one person's views to an entire organization is a fallacy. Even if they are the leader.

As a service, I like Kagi. Both in principle, and in practice. I find the "summarize this page" feature to be very useful. I also like the idea of paying for value, rather than being forced to feed the advertising beast. So I pay for value. If it stops being valuable, I will stop paying. I care about privacy, but I also realize that we live in a world where there are serious limits on the amount of privacy that can be expected. So I have to just do the best I can with what is available. Kagi is at least an improvement on the standard "eyeballs are the product" business model.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#228

Post by slackfan »

Kagi is not a product I'd use, nor do I get the hype around it.

The company has apparently made a significant amount of bad business decisions.

The author is a politically-obsessed weirdo who gets upset when people deny their delusions.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#229

Post by 34679 »

nunez wrote: post #191
yreg wrote: post #29

I've read the first third of the article and I didn't get what's the author's problem with Kagi. What do they care how many employees Kagi has or how much they spend on t-shirts. Then I scrolled through the rest of it and read the very last screenshot. That one looks pretty bad. > people who really need anonymity are very rare. probably less than a 100 in the entire world. definitely not typical Kagi users > unless t…

He's right though (or at least I agree with him). Full anonymity is hard to achieve. Kagi is aiming for more privacy, I.e. a search engine and browser that doesn't track your habits or sell them to data brokers to identify you. Kagi does that very well.

Anonymity should be the default. I don't have any right to come peeking into your windows, or to tap your phone, even if there's a market for whatever I discover. The same should be true for online activity.

And his comment about needing privacy? Name one person that needs privacy while taking a shit. Just because your desire for privacy doesn't rise to the level of need, that doesn't make it any less valid.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#230

Post by HWR_14 »

lijok wrote: post #73

Lori seems (from the blog post and the subsequent email chain with the CEO) to be unnecessarily combative and most definitely too emotionally invested in Kagi. You're paying, what, 10, 25 USD - are you getting a good service for it? If not, unsubscribe, if yes, what's the problem? Sounds like they're profitable now, so little risk of the service dissapearing. Unnecessary drama by people who live for drama. My only ad…

People pay $0 to Google/Meta/Twitter/TikTok for their base level offerings, and their privacy policy is valid to discuss and criticize. Does it somehow become less important just because they are also getting paid money?

People discuss Apple's commitment to privacy and if it is real or adequate.

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