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Vlad Thank you Vlad for your consistent, principled, and transparent approach. Regardless of how this “bug report” gets resolved, basing the outcome on the benefit to users and to search quality appears very reasonable and fair.

      CrunchyFritos Judging by the social media reactions to this, I wouldn't say most people describe explicitly amoral decision-making as "principled".

      Brave is known for bundling cryptocurrency in its browser, "accidentally" holding payments in escrow indefinitely, "accidentally" replacing links with affiliate links, and being run by someone who financed homophobic political campaigns and has not since apologized for that action. There needs to be one sufficiently large index; "one that's like Google but worse and significantly more problematic" is probably not a great option.

      Kagi has a good reputation among the wealthy privileged mostly-male Hacker News tech crowd, which is a small niche. If it wants to diversify and grow, it'll need to listen to users outside a privileged bubble and see what keeps potential users away. I've heard mixed reception from HN-like techbro circles, but universally negative feedback from queer people I've spoken to about this.

      This may be news to those fortunate enough to not live on the side impacted by issues like this, but people are hesitant to finance actors who finance causes that reject their own identity. If Kagi is to grow, it needs to consider viewpoints outside such a narrow demographic. I'd also consider whether opinions in this forum are biased; I'd wager that queer voices are underrepresented in a forum that also allows messages like "There's nothing wrong with being against gay marriage". We deal with these folks enough offline.

          carl It's political opinion and everybody has the right to theirs.

          You are welcome to hold a homophobic opinion, and others are welcome to despise you for it and refuse to do business with you. Freedom of opinion is a two-way street.

          When your opinion invalidates someone's identity, don't expect that person to feel welcome in your company. Exclusionary views tend not to be met with inclusion, as tolerance and inclusion are a social contract that needs to be upheld on both ends.

              Vlad Is Bing not an option? Dozens of engines use its API.

              Kagi already uses Mojeek, Teclis, and Marginalia in addition to Google so it's already not entirely dependent.

                Seirdy I think actually you are raising some fair points. Putting aside the personal beliefs of Brendan Eich, Brave the company has a long and rich history of scummy behaviour and lying to its users. While Brave touts itself as a "privacy company", they are fundamentally still an extractive business. I don't believe their goals align with Kagi's goals to humanize the web.

                Coupled with the fact that their search engine is frankly kind of crap, I don't see there being any benefit to partnering with them when you look at the overall picture.

                  I really dislike Brave & Eich, but Vlad's explanation in this thread makes sense. But I still dislike Brave & Eich. Bleh.

                  Seirdy This campaigning against Eich is not reasonable in any way. It is a form of mob justice, where a victim is chosen and terrorised in order to make an example for others. And I mean literally that you are terrorising him, seeking out business partners to smear him, decades after he made a political donation.

                  A victim is chosen by the mob, then dehumanized, and then you justify for yourself that it is right to try to break him – even more than a decade after his supposed crime. It makes you feel powerful and righteous. It is a pattern all throughout humanity, especially when groups with very little coherence or a lot of internal conflict are trying to keep themselves united. The victim mechanism is one of the most powerful ways to unite people, because they forget all rhyme and reason when they are presented with a victim they can direct all their hate towards. And if you can choose a victim that is no threat to you, then even better, because they will not strike back. Eich is a human being just like you, and he is not involving politics in his Brave projects, so they should be judged for what they are.

                    I feel that @Vlad really clearly laid out a reasonable, thoughtful response to the topic here and I appreciate that very much. Considering that the original post appears to be a hit & run made by a new account and the poster never returned to elaborate or respond perhaps this issue can be considered resolved.

                    Seirdy Thanks for constructive feedback. Can you make this a seperate feature suggestion?

                        I am closing this thread because discussion inveitably tends to go outside the scope of search, which is not what this forum is for, and I feel I explained our position to the extent it is humanly possible.

                        If anyone feels this needs to be reopened, ping me on Kagi Discord.

                        Vlad locked the discussion .
                          5 days later

                          I'll gladly remove my financial backing of Kagi if they continue to support Brave. It's bad enough Google and Bing are being helped by Kagi search results, we don't need to encourage unethical crypto nutjobs while we're at it.

                          Vlad locking a forum post with many replies in support of removing Brave kind of tells me all I need to know about Kagi's true motives.

                          I guess this will be cowardly locked after one post, though. Or, just deleted outright.

                          I did not expect search results from avowed, deliberate, unethical entities in my results.

                          Came here to see if there had been a response and change in stance before cancelling my account.

                          You can already see on the stats page that there are 102 fewer members today compared to yesterday. This will continue to hit kagi's bottom line, as it should if they want to support Brave.

                          Merged 5 posts from Remove Brave.
                            Vlad unlocked the discussion .