Privacy

31893 readers

581 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

141

Why I Lost Faith in Kagi (d-shoot.net)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Turns out Kagi does do advertising

They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that. Every company advertises with its products. I don't see what's reprehensible about that.

We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

They're right, anonymity and privacy are two different things. Since you have to pay to use Kagi, you're not anonymous. But they allegedly don't know what you as the user search for when using their search engine. So they're being honest here and how can honesty be bad here? Anyways, we're on [email protected], not [email protected] or whatever.

“AI is mentioned zero times”

While I still give you this one, they're technically correct. The word "AI" isn't there but they mention AI features, haha. It's a bit debatable since Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools. Only when you go to the pricing page there are mentions of AI tools.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

I don't think we have an argument except maybe on technicality, so I'll do my best to use your points as a springboard for further clarification/critique of Kagi and not of you.

They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that.

What's wrong is Vlad had just said "That community is 100% responsible for Kagi's growth as a business through word of mouth (Kagi does no paid advertising)"

And he should be the first person to know that statement isn't correct.

may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

The problem here is that nobody in this community will recommend a corporation that "may know everything about you but respect your privacy."

When recommending a messager service, common consensus always leans towards the one that knows the least about you.
This is because corporations can change or be forced to give up data, which would render the pinkie-promise of "we won't" moot
I've seen an argument posted here or on Reddit that Google is technically private because they know about you and won't sell ads; it's basically the Kagi line. Basically nobody cares even if it's true (and it's turned out to not be true).

Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools.

Maybe not the homepage, but the site itself is very explicit about AI being the point of their project. And if Kagi will change their statements about everything else on a dime, and have such poor views on privacy, why not also follow their own manifesto?

You can read their pro-AI manifesto on the Kagi.com domain right here.

You can read a critique of this manifesto and how it talks about you "volunteering" your data to search engines, and other creepy stuff, right here.