Pluralistic: Too big to care (04 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
  • Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    9 months ago

    Downvote me into oblivion but Kagi ain’t shit. It’s a glorified Google frontend. The author is right that the web is filled with AI generated articles and fake reviews and lists but Kagi is not immune to this enshittification.

    I even tried the same query the author was bitching about. Here is Kagi’s first two links for top 10 air purifiers. Notice how the first result is a BS website called top10.com and the second one is one of the “fake review” websites .

    And here is Google’s. First result is Wirecutter, and this might be subjective but I trust Wirecutter reviews on most things.

    Rest of the Google results are exactly what the author was mentioning. But Kagi was no different.

    So $10/month to get the same shit? No thank you. I agree that Google turned to shit compared to what it was but it is still the best search engine out there. Now if the article was about privacy concerns then they would have a point. Which is what Kagi is all about anyway. So let’s stop the fucking act.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
        0·
        9 months ago

        It’s not even comparable in quality. It’s like almost trolling to even suggest they are in the same league. If you don’t want to spend 10 dollars, fine, but maybe stop pretending that your instance is somehow the best quality search engine that exists… :)

        • Melody Fwygon@beehaw.org
          1·
          9 months ago

          Your argument clearly shows that you fail to see the benefits of doing it yourself. I get quality results from my local instance due to my persistence and work put in to adjust the settings necessary. I’ve balanced the privacy and functionality of the instance to fit my needs and it costs me nothing but a few minutes of my time each week to do so.

          Kagi doing it for $10 a month sounds like they’re turning a neat profit off of you; and you’re refusing to accept that I have achieved levels of search competence that Kagi has without paying for Kagi or even using their free searches or service.

          Whether or not it makes sense to you value-wise to pay or not pay for Kagi does not matter in this discussion. it only matters that none of the things Kagi can do that I find useful are things that cannot be done with SearXNG.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I started using Kagi a few months before $10 became unlimited queries.

    When I first switched I’d still, occasionally, swap back to google using bangs because I had to unlearn all the hacks I had to make Google turn up useful things. Now I can’t go back, Google is unsable without those hacks. Its barely usable with them.

    Plus Kagi has a “fediverse forum” lens that lets me search Lemmy much more effectively than Lemmy’s search.