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Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

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Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#201

Post by claytongulick »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #59

I think this is amazing. Love Kagi. I’m happy to pay for a good search. Nobody speaks about their AI Assistant, but it is really good. They somehow harnessed it so that it mainly searches info first and sticks to the verifiable data. I prefer it to Claude or any other, because it actually answers the question I need without fluff or “Great question! Here’s some plausible nonsense you can trip over instead of doing ac…

I remember at the time they were working on it a lot of people (honestly, including me) were pretty critical of them "wasting" their limited resources on AI stuff. We saw it as being sort of similar to the t-shirt drama [1].

I'm here to admit I was wrong, it's incredibly useful. It misses the mark frequently, like any LLM, but it's well annotated with footnotes that link to the original material.

I use it all the time.

I also love how easy it is to use or not - just add a question mark to the end of your query to use the AI, or leave it off for traditional search.

With that UX it doesn't feel like it's being shoved down my throat.

[1] https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#202

Post by freediver »

jwr wrote: post #126

[flagged]

(Kagi founder here)

I respect that you're making a principled choice, even though we see this differently. Kagi uses products and services from companies around the world, including the USA, Europe, and China, but that does not imply endorsement of the actions (past, present, or future) of any of the governments where those companies are based. We'd rather focus on building great software than on things in the world we can't control. Our decisions are guided by the relentless pursuit of the best product quality, user privacy, and our goal of providing a user-centric alternative to dominant tech platforms.

edit: I encourage you (and others in similar dilemma) to watch our origin story to see why are we here and what it is that we stand for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSntB1ip4RE

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#203

Post by rcpt »

frereubu wrote: post #96

The one thing I find slightly grating about links to Kagi blogs is the top comments are almost always "I use Kagi and it's great!" rather than about the content of the blog. And I'm a happy Kagi subscriber! I get that this is an option, but what it really shows to me is how broken the model for journalism is. In my view you almost always only get good-quality journalism if you pay for it. (Somehow - e.g. the BBC is p…

Micropayments never work. It's too much friction for the median user to decide if they want to spend a quarter on an article.

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/micropayments-and-ment...

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#204

Post by JK-Swizzle »

tqi wrote: post #200

Everyone hate paywalls, ads, and aggregators. So what business models are even left? Are we just going to have patron supported echo chambers and propaganda from now on?

I am of the opinion that ads are not inherently bad, just that they have gone too far.

An ad on the sidebar is not an issue. For example the site for Rufus: rufus.ie

The issue is when ads cause trouble loading, autoplay audio, block the content of the website, have fake close buttons… Really anything that prevents a user from using the site for it’s intended purpose.

Things only go stale when the people behind them get greedy. As another user said, micropayments won’t work because the credit card companies take half the money. If some major players were willing to earn a decent profit rather than the optimal profit, stuff would work a lot better on the user end.

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#205

Post by jkkola »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #59

I think this is amazing. Love Kagi. I’m happy to pay for a good search. Nobody speaks about their AI Assistant, but it is really good. They somehow harnessed it so that it mainly searches info first and sticks to the verifiable data. I prefer it to Claude or any other, because it actually answers the question I need without fluff or “Great question! Here’s some plausible nonsense you can trip over instead of doing ac…

Kagi's translation is absolutely top notch. I used it for a few things and while Google's, even Gemini, got some context, kagi's caught the spirit of the text perfectly.

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#206

Post by bluGill »

carlosjobim wrote: post #131
mrngld wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be onboard with supporting a local newspaper -- if they hadn't gone all-in with aligning themselves to a particular political tribe. They're part of the problem Ground News makes obvious to a hilarious degree, where if something happens that doesn't fit the narrative you just will never see it if you only look at their platform. Given that not everyone has a reputable local newspaper I don't know that saying "eve…

There's still valuable info in your local newspaper even if their agenda is the opposite of yours. You just have to read between the lines and phone their bias. But the biggest stories in your local community will of course be completely hushed many times.

You assume there is one. My 'local' covers high school sports, road construction, but none of the important issues that I need to care about to be an informed voter.

I need someone to be at the library board meeting, school board meeting, city counsel meeting... Some of these happen at the same time so I can't attend them all even if I didn't have other things not mentioned I'm doing then.

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#207

Post by II2II »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #177
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #59

I think this is amazing. Love Kagi. I’m happy to pay for a good search. Nobody speaks about their AI Assistant, but it is really good. They somehow harnessed it so that it mainly searches info first and sticks to the verifiable data. I prefer it to Claude or any other, because it actually answers the question I need without fluff or “Great question! Here’s some plausible nonsense you can trip over instead of doing ac…

I've been a subscriber to Kagi for a few years and just started using the AI assistant. On the one hand, it's made me a believer in AI as it relates to web searching. On the other hand, the only reason I need AI to search the web is that the web is now a impenetrable forest of near unreadable, SEO-stuffed, spammy articles.

> On the other hand, the only reason I need AI to search the web is that the web is now a impenetrable forest of near unreadable, SEO-stuffed, spammy articles.

Unfortunately, that is nothing new. A big part of the reason why Google gained popularity, and maintained it for so long, was its resistance to SEO stuffed, spammy articles. The spammers continued escalating things, and now it pretty much takes AI to avoid their garbage.

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#209

Post by joseda-hg »

preg_match wrote: post #188
frereubu wrote: post #96

The one thing I find slightly grating about links to Kagi blogs is the top comments are almost always "I use Kagi and it's great!" rather than about the content of the blog. And I'm a happy Kagi subscriber! I get that this is an option, but what it really shows to me is how broken the model for journalism is. In my view you almost always only get good-quality journalism if you pay for it. (Somehow - e.g. the BBC is p…

The biggest problem with micropayments is how credit card payment processors work. You typically pay a percentage fee. But they thought of everything, so you also pay a flat fee per transaction like 10 cents. So they can get their money from tiny transaction. So for something like a 20 cent micropayment, you pay more to your processor than you pocket. One solution is a universal token system or something like it. You…

Isn't this what Brave tried to push? You get their Basic Attention Token crypto

Re: Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

#210

Post by JK-Swizzle »

OroPla wrote: post #45

While this is a nice feature, needing an account (nevermind paying) to then only get a meta search engine will prevent me from ever using it. I already spread my searches across at least four different engines (Bing, Ecosia, Startpage & Yandex), so no single provider has a complete profile of all my searches. I certainly won't be paying to hand over my data.

They do offer a mostly anonymous search via the privacy pass. It generates tokens to prove subscription without providing account details. I believe it changes token every session, but it might be every search.

Mostly anonymous because even if they don’t know your account, we all know they can still track your fingerprint.

Keep in mind I have drank the Kagi koolaid, so I’m a bit biased.

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