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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#451

Post by kelnos »

alemanek wrote: post #245
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combative in this case means treating the exchange as combat: a fight to win; rather than an opportunity to be humble and listen to others and learn. The exchanges all read like Vlad derives a lot of self-esteem from being right, which isn't as good as deriving it from ability to learn when wrong.

Wouldn’t the same apply to Lori in that exchange. They just put the company on blast and aren’t willing to even hear the other side of things. That email exchange made me lose a ton of respect for them. But, Vlad definitely should have stopped when Lori responded that they didn’t want to have a conversation at all. If for no other reason than they were a lost cause.

The problem is that Vlad seems objectively wrong about his interpretation of the GDPR and what is and is not PII. (I mean, jesus, "email address isn't PII because you can use a burner"? What, no, that's not how it works).

Instead of actually educating himself, he just argues that he's not wrong. I could easily see Lori being sick of the frustration of having to deal with that and just say "ok, nope, this conversation is done".

> They just put the company on blast and aren’t willing to even hear the other side of things.

I don't think that's what actually happened?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#452

Post by swatcoder »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #437
swatcoder wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serving optimally performing ads to billions of global users is a radically different problem than serving optimal search results and accessory features to a self-selected 50,000 or 500,000 customers.

Hence why I specifically said search quality without mentioning a large userbase... Did you not see the last part on your end? Plus, if anything a small userbase makes it more difficult for quality search because the long tail is still effectively infinitely large, relative to the competencies of a single decision maker, but now there is only have one user searching for any random super niche topic maybe once a month…

The point is that search quality is subjective, not objective, and the two companies are each structured to approach it very differently.

In pursuing billions of global users across all demographics and trying to maximally monetize them through ads, Google is pursuing an entirely different measure of "search quality" than Kagi.

Google delivers their version of search quality when a rice farmer in Thailand and financier in the Bay Area both reach for Google when they want to find something online and then get distracted by an ad.

Meanwhile, Kagi gets their version right when they have a profitable base of happy customers. They can make different and more aggressive assumptions about the needs of their users, solicit and digest direct feedback about those assumptions, and optimize a product that delivers superb search quality for their niche.

They're completely different technical problems that only occasionally intersect. Their engineering teams aren't competing with each other.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#453

Post by threatofrain »

mr_machine wrote: post #95

I'm a subscriber simply because their search is far better than any available alternative. That's the primary thing I want from them and so far they're delivering it at a cost I consider fair. Their other projects are not interesting or useful to me, but so far I can simply ignore them. Yes, on some level I wish they'd focus and quit wasting money and energy on things I don't care about, but that's really not my affa…

Yup, I also find it an awkward point that Kagi is a pro-privacy company but they're sitting on top of an information gold mine. Google has to infer who you are whereas Kagi just knows. Your credit card too.

And to continue down the road of AI proficiency, Kagi will need to retain a lot of data.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#454

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rsynnott wrote: post #102
magistr4te wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tldr: you can't just spread a very negative opinion about someones hard work and then plug your ears shut for any kind of non-symathetic interaction. In my eyes this rationale would make sense if there was no backstory to this. If there was no preceeding blogpost, I'd consider Vlads messages pure spam. But the context here is different: The author wrote a very critical, and clearly opinionated blogpost. There was cle…

You can criticise something without obligating yourself to have a conversation with the subject. In fact, that is generally how most critical writing has worked, for centuries. If you're unhappy with the review of your restaurant in the paper, you _might_ be able to convince them to publish a short owner response, once, but they're certainly not going to engage in a dialogue about it.

> You can criticise something without obligating yourself to have a conversation with the subject.

That's the fundamental premise of telling people that they are sealioning.

Not everyone agrees with it (I suspect age plays more a role than anything else).

Your historical example doesn't really map very well to today, because control over the ability to put some text somewhere that others can read it is very, very different than it was historically.

None of this excuses the Kagi CEO's failure to back off when asked/told to. They should just have used their own blog or equivalent to respond.

Still, generalizing to a broad claim about raising an issue in public creating no future obligations seems somewhat wrong to me. You don't have to speak in public about anything at all. For me, your choice to do so creates some limited obligations towards future engagement (though I'm not sure quite where the limits lie).

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#455

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sumeno wrote: post #143
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we live in different worlds, but there's a world of distanced between unhinged and roughly 3 emails to someone who wrote a peice targeted specifically at your business. If anything the replies in that Mastadon thread make the author and others appear petty, combative and immature imo, and I do not say that as someone who agrees with all Vlad's perspectives.

If someone tells you to stop emailing them after 1 email don't send 2 more. It's that easy

Is it so weird that I 100% agree with both you, and the parent comment yours is replying to?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#456

Post by kerkeslager »

brewdad wrote: post #366
kerkeslager wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a difficult question, but I think we can pretty clearly say that a user base with a high concentration of AdTech workers is probably a bit biased against a company that is pretty clearly anti-AdTech. The number of times I've heard people extol the virtues of targeted ads on this site is absurd. I've even heard folks here say that Google ads are more helpful than the search results as if that's a good thing . A…

I would think people in AdTech would be first in line to pay for a search engine that avoids AdTech. They understand how the sausage is made. They want the rest of us to use the AdTech products but they themselves are going to avoid them where possible. How often do you think the CEO pf Delta Airlines flies in first class versus on a private jet? My guess is only often enough to gin up a little PR.

Sure, but that doesn't translate into people telling the truth online.

And to be clear, I'm not even talking about being intentionally dishonest. AdTech workers likely believe the pro-ad propaganda they spout because they have to in order to live with themselves.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#457

Post by dontupvoteme »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #83
BadHumans wrote: post #46

> Oh and they own a t-shirt factory. Maybe I'm being pedantic but Kagi doesn't own a T-shirt factory and presenting it as such is a bad faith argument that does make me question the author. They very clearly point out that they worked with a print shop in Serbia to make the shirts.

That makes a whole lot more sense considering Vlad is from former Yugoslavia

It also explains why people have it out for him.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#458

Post by neoromantique »

sleepybrett wrote: post #443
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…

.. to emotionally invested. She saw some stuff on their discord from the founder that was honestly .. weird if not just plain neglegent (the gdpr arguments, he's wrong for the record) .. the tax stuff. She posted an article. He reached out to her via email to set up a call. She demurred and asked him to stop contacting her, he persisted and wrote a petulant novella of an email. She asserted that he stop contacting he…

The way I see it, she has posted a blog post with factually wrong information, effectively slandering the business. CEO got in touch to bridge the gap and amend possible misunderstandings, there's absolutely nothing wrong in that, her email responses are just unhinged, and after reading the mother-of-echo-chambers that is her mastodon instance I think I understand why.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#459

Post by [deleted] »

flakeoil wrote: post #411
garciansmith wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been curious about Kagi but the idea of running all my searches through one company while logged in worries me. Yes, I realize most people do that with Google and could care less, but I do. For me to try Kagi I'd need a much firmer commitment to user privacy, not the wishy-washy hand-waving portrayed here.

For google it probably does not matter if you are logged in or not. They know who you are anyway when you do your searches.

[deleted]

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#460

Post by tdeck »

> They have "FastGPT", where their focus is having a ChatGPT style service that is focused on being fast, not accurate.

How could someone come up with this idea and think it was good? For a search engine whose user base is so interested in better quality results they're willing to pay for them?

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