I'll take my ban for saying that Lori seems like they have a bit of stick up their ass and that the CEO of Kagi seems to react how most people who are offended act.
Not very professional for a CEO to directly react that way to someone, for sure.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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i was impressed enough with kagi's by-default deranking/filtering of seo garbage that i got a year's subscription a while back. good to know that this is what that money went to. suppose i'll ride out the subscription (assuming they don't start injecting ai garbage into search before then) and then find some other alternative
switching topics, but i do find it weird how the Brave integration stuff (which i also only found out about after i got the subscription) hadn't... bothered me as much? to be exceptionally clear, fuck Brandon Eich and Brave -- the planet deserves fewer bigots, crypto grifters, and covid conspiracists -- but i can't put my finger on why Kagi paying to consume Brave's search API's just doesn't cause as much friction with me. honestly it could be the fact that when i pay for Kagi it doesn't feel like i'm bankrolling Eich and his ads-as-a-service grift, whereas the money for my subscription is definitely paying for Vlad to ~~reply-guy into bloggers' inboxes who are critical of the way Kagi operates~~ correct misunderstandings about Kagi.
Refusing to discuss in fear of being cornered sounds childish to me, especially as a reply to a first message! If your arguments are strong and reasonable, there is absolutely nothing wrong in discussing a subject.
Looking at this, it even sounds great that he would be willing to discuss with users.
I dont understand the hostility really What do you want them to do instead? Just cave in to every request anyone may have?
So in reading the comments from Lori there is a pretty good reason why the initial offer for a call was rejected, this was left out in the main body of the post. Their point was if a private conversation takes place, especially over a call where information isn't recorded, then the CEO could claim whatever they want took place during that conversation.
Here is the quote, you can find it in the third comment from the top:
"1) If there's one thing I know about online interactions, it's not to let someone take you to Crime Scene Number Two. Having a private debate with Vlad about this would mean no witnesses and no accountability, meaning he could claim anything about the discussion. Even moreso when done through a call instead of text."
So I do agree that it seems a bit hostile for a first response but it does seem to come from experience with these situations. You could give the CEO the benefit of the doubt and say that wasn't his intentions, but if I was in Lori's shoes I would have reacted the same way and not given the benefit of the doubt.
I will say that, with Kagi, I enjoyed the custom site ranking feature. That said, the image results usually sucked, the site searches weren't really that much better than something like DDG, and it overall wasn't worth supporting a company with another egotistical tech bro CEO.
Actually, that email exchange isn't as combative as I expected.
I'm not going to de-anonymize my search history, so Kagi isn't a thing for me, but he doesn't seem as unhinged as some of these other techbros.
Actually, that email exchange isn’t as combative as I expected.
i suppose the CEO completely barreling forward past multiple attempts to refuse conversation while NOT screaming slurs at the person they're attempting to lecture, is, in some sense, strictly better than the alternative
The bar hasn't been so high in a while, christ that's sad.
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I'll be honest, I wanted to like Kagi because Google has become so useless. But I've not had any better success finding things on it than Google.
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I don't use Kagi. Frankly, I hadn't heard of them before this, but I'm not sure what classifies this as unhinged narcissism. I don't know if there's more to see but what I saw was an email trying to address concerns with the product.
No "apologist" stuff here, I'm just not sure why this would be classified as unhinged narcissism. Can someone explain? Genuinely would like to know.
The main reason is that the CEO continues to respond after 2 requests to stop the conversation, it would've been more appropriate after the request to just simply make a blog post or something addressing the points made on the blog post itself without naming the author, that way they're talking to their community about community concerns.
Repeated responses via direct message after being asked to stop 2+ times is harassment. The initial reach out itself was perfectly fine and expected, but respecting when someone doesn't want to engage in the conversation directly, and reaching out to the community in its entirety about the concerns is what should've been done by the CEO here for this to have ended in a better way for everyone.
oh hey, you’re also an apologist for the bigot Brendan Eich so thanks for making it easy to determine that this stupid bullshit is a pattern for you