142

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 .

      WoundedMoose I'm not a fan of Google or Microsoft either but the fact is that they provide useful services that Kagi pretty much can't go without. Brave, on the other hand, is a subpar search engine run by a company that's known for being extremely shady as well as being helmed by a bigot. There's no practical reason Kagi should have been doing business with them.

      I've already cancelled my payments. There's a chance I would re-subscribe depending on the response to this debacle, because I've had good results with Kagi and I genuinely think something like this needs to exist. But this mess has seriously damaged Kagi's image with pretty much everyone I know who would have been inclined to pay for a decent search engine. I don't know what kind of course-correction could possibly be good enough.

          I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. It’s weird to me that Brave is a line too far for people when the scale of evil that Google and Microsoft has brought to the world is so much larger and Kagi was already sourcing from them, bothering no one who chose to use the service. Don’t get me wrong, Brave sucks ass. I’m queer and homophobia is of course a very close issue to my heart, but I can’t find any framing that makes Brave a bigger issue than Microsoft. That said, I’d ideally like to see a response focused more on a pragmatic look at different options than a blanket “we won’t get involved in politics,” as a service which acts as one's portal into the world of information has an extremely political job and simply ignoring the political ramifications of your work doesn't make them disappear, it simply means you side with whatever is the default in a given scenario, in this case chosen by financial convenience.

          Granted, there's another angle to this. Relying on Google and/or Microsoft is pretty much a requirement for having good results, and so swallowing the pill of indirectly supporting them is something I'm willing to do as the alternative would be one of the completely independent crawlers which...are not great. The same can't really be said of Brave, and the benefits are not really passed onto me as a user. On your end you gain a bit of redundancy and cheaper API usage, but my subscription costs the same and the search quality is practically identical to how it was before it was added. I'm willing to accept that there are necessary evils for you to do business with to make the product meet the level of quality we all desire, but I'm unconvinced Brave is one of them.

          I'm not immediately compelled to cancel my subscription, but the responses here have been unsatisfying and I'll have to see how this all shakes out before I make a decision. I'd like the decisionmakers to not underestimate the power of an act of goodwill. Is whatever Brave offers you really worth making queer people and motivated allies second guess their support of Kagi? There is a massive amount of friction you have to overcome to make people even consider the option of paying for search, and choices like this only add more. In other words, if you're going to ask someone to pay for something which has always been free on the strength of a more principled approach to the web, you'd better make sure your hands are clean.

          I don't quite understand the focus on Brave. Google has done much shadier things than Brave (that's why they had to pay billions of dollars of EU fines). And nobody seems to talk much about Yandex, where the (now former) CEO is even on the EU sanctions list because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yandex is by far a much shadier company than Brave.

          Where should Vlad draw a line? He'd have to remove everything but Teclis (Kagi's own index) and maybe Mojeek. And nobody would pay for that and Kagi would cease to exist.

          And if Kagi would start with removing just your evil pet peeve company, then other people would get mad because Kagi didn't remove their evil company as an API source as well.

          The best solution in this circumstance is probably an option to select the search sources for yourself, and that's already planned.

            protospork There's no practical reason Kagi should have been doing business with them.

            As users, we simply cannot evaluate this. As going into business with another provider inevitably required resources, we can only assume there is a benefit for Kagis business. Why this is the case has been outlined by Vlad.

            protospork I've already cancelled my payments.

            Whatever good this serves. If anti-Microsoft, anti-Google and anti-Yandex users try to push Kagi in similar directions, there will be no Kagi, something you “genuinely think (...) needs to exist”. A company which keeps a multitude of communication channels open and does business with another company whose CEO supported legislation against same-sex marriage, is an easy target for criticism. At the same time, there are likely millions of people in California who – incomprehensible to me – still oppose same-sex marriage, will support measures against it and will vote accordingly. As someone who was born into an Eastern bloc dictatorship I can only recommend this: Choose your battles wisely.

                Peter I think the solution idea is pretty good.
                However, I don't see how Google and Yandex are much shadier than Brave yet. I haven't found as much criticism about them with a quick search, could you please elaborate on this a bit more?

                    Porente
                    Google's (legal and illegal) large scale invasion into our privacy for example. Just a year ago they had to pay 392m$ for secretly tracking people's locations

                    I think the best start would be if users could decide which backends they want for themselves and which not. As others have written there may be only Mojeek and Marginalia whose associates have never done anything (we/you consider) wrong publicly

                      Porente
                      The Wikipedia articles Criticism of Google and Antitrust cases against Google by the European Union are good starting points for Google. And remember, Google also owns YouTube, which is, according to this investigative journalist, the worst social media company (and I now, it's almost funny that this link is a YouTube video).

                      And about Yandex: the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin seem to exert significant influence on Yandex. This is a summary of a good article (the article is in German but we can use Kagi's Universal Summarizer to translate the content).

                        It's good to see you reopen this thread, as I think it's about one of the most important decisions Kagi has to make. And I'm not talking about Brave specifically, or whether users should be allowed to select their search index of choice. I'm talking about where Kagi is positioning itself politically.

                        Now, I can already hear some of you groan, most likely Vlad himself, but also a large number of tech-focused, privileged people with six-figure jobs who, too, think that "politics should stay out of tech". I've been one of you.

                        The thing is: You can't do it. The "apolitical" position always is the position in favor of the status quo. "I just wanna develop a search engine without being distracted by politics" really means "I want to develop a search engine for the world as it currently is". Which is a valid political stance to take, but you have to realize that it is a political stance.

                        Keeping the world as it currently is, however, means keeping it a pretty horrible place for people who aren't part of the majority. If you've never been gay, never been trans, never been Black or a woman or disabled or, heaven forbid, several of these things combined, it's very easy for you to say "I don't care about politics, I just want good search results". But people who are struggling every day, who are "playing life on hard mode" because the system is rigged against them, whose very lives are endangered by bigotry and violence and abortion bans and whatnot — they might have different priorities. And they want the world to change.You're calling them "political", not realizing that "I don't care about their suffering" is just as political.

                        Kagi paying someone who then uses that money to finance campaigns against minorities might've been the straw that broke the camel's back for many, but I see a more fundamental issue here. People are disillusioned. They expected a "company created with the mission to humanize the web" to focus on humanity, not amoral tech. You can't "humanize" while pretending ethics aren't a part of that. You're not humanizing anything by doing business with people who deny basic human rights to their minority of choice.

                        Maybe you've got your market research wrong. I didn't choose Kagi because of slightly better search results. I mean, it's been a factor, yes. But I mainly chose you because I assumed (after reading a lot of your documentation, too!) that your goal was to focus on people over profits. I was okay with paying for your service because "no ads, no tracking, and things like the Kagi Small Web initiative to keep SEO-heavy, commercialized sites out of your search results" sounded like you had pretty solid ethics actually.

                        I now had to find out that Kagi is not about humanity as a whole, but about maximizing personal freedom for their users, which is a completely different thing. Yes, if you're a White able-bodied straight cis tech bro this is pretty neat. But I care about the well-being of people who are less fortunate than me. And that's why I can't support Kagi any longer. You're actively hurting my friends, I can't pay you for that.

                        Vlad, I sympathize with your desire to stay out of politics, I really do. It's just not possible. You're already political. Because political philosophy already has a name for people who detest any intervention into personal freedom (like you did when you considered suicide prevention "annoying"), and who value freedom of choice over collective well-being. It's called right-libertarianism.

                        It's a valid political stance, but there's nothing "humanizing" about it.

                          scy
                          But what's your solution then? Because just removing Brave from the API sources is "only" about your pet peeve. If you truly desire a morally superior search engine, you must eliminate all API sources because other sources are just as bad. But that means Kagi can close its business.

                              It's good to see you reopen this thread, as I think it's about one of the most important decisions Kagi has to make.

                              You're right about that. If Kagi gives in to activists and witch hunts against individual persons, they're not going to stay in business for long. Because once these kind of groups set their teeth into an organisation, they never let go, until there's just bones left. I see threatening language against Kagi repeatedly used in this thread. These are not the kind of people worth trying to please, because they will always have a hostile and entitled attitude. Their motives are to further their agenda no matter the cost. If they destroy Kagi in the process, that's no big deal to them. What do they care that there's an alternative to Google? Political zeal trumps all.

                              Now Mr Eich has been selected by the cyber mob as a preferred victim. Has he done anything particularly horrible? Not at all, he's just a convenient target because the activists do not see him as a threat to their life or property. That is why political activists do not go after people who are actually doing horrible things, because they want easy victims to destroy. Nobody dares to defend a chosen victim, because they fear that the mob's anger will turn against themselves – as we see again and again through history. It's a fundamental aspect of human evil.

                              The poster above me paints a picture that everybody who doesn't agree with him is some kind of ignorant and "privileged" tech worker with a huge salary. Half of Kagi's users are outside the USA, and six figure salaries are extremely uncommon outside of the US. So it's prejudice, and not much more. In the text above, he or she selects some people who are valid humans, and discredits the experience and opinions of everybody else. Based on skin color, sexuality and gender.

                              Kagi paying someone who then uses that money to finance campaigns against minorities...

                              I've seen no evidence for that.

                              I didn't choose Kagi because of slightly better search results.

                              I'm pretty sure most everybody else did, and that's the business model with a future.

                              Yes, if you're a White able-bodied straight cis tech bro this is pretty neat.

                              Hatred and resentment against people based on their skin color or other inherited aspects that you mention usually stems from an untreated issue of self-hatred. That's why helping people instead of hurting people is the best solution.

                              Attacking people and businesses based on who they associate with is a purge technique very familiar to students of history and empires. I recommend reading the memoirs of Khrushchev for anybody interested in the form it took at its worst, or read on Roman history.

                              Here is something Mr Eich wrote:
                              https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

                              Since that didn't please the activists, I ask what would?

                                @scy thank you very much for making such thoughtful and articulate points. I appreciate you not only laying out all of your concerns on the issue but also pushing back against the notion that a product like Kagi can be apolitical.

                                @scy Very much agreed. As a trans person, it hurts to see the search engine I enjoy using so much directly support people who want me dead. Information (access) is political.

                                  zotan

                                  @scy Very much agreed. As a trans person, it hurts to see the search engine I enjoy using so much directly support people who want me dead.

                                  I think this is incredibly unfair, unreasonable and frankly a ridiculous mischaracterization of the issue. It does nothing to enhance the conversation and if anything, outright lying just harms the discourse.