• jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    That was a huge wall of text - TLDR :

    • Kagi has private investors
    • Kagi has had some questionable uses of the private funding, such as opening a t-shirt company
    • Kagi started as a AI focused company and pivoted to search
    • Kagi is spread too thin over many different projects
    • Kagi doesn’t take privacy, or user data seriously

    Fair enough, but as long as google, bing, ddg, etc get more and more unusable there will be fans of alternative searches

    Even if Kagi crashes and burns, it has demonstrated there is a market demand for useful search results that users pay for directly.

    FWIW I don’t use Kagi because of the login / payment info requirements, so I agree broadly with the author. As bad as public searching is, its good enough to not give up privacy.

  • Affidavit@aussie.zone
    1·
    7 months ago

    TBH, OP sounds like a bit of an entitled douche, edit: not the most appropriate descriptor, but I do think OP should try and look at the situation from another perspective.

    In their blog post they complained about lack of transparency and noted numerous issues with Kagi that caused them to lose faith in the company. The CEO personally responds to explain themselves (i.e. make things more transparent) and OP sticks their fingers in their ears and acts liked they’re a victim because the CEO attempts service recovery.

    I’ve made public complaints about companies before. I wish I received such tailored and personalised responses.

  • wolfruff@pawb.social
    1·
    7 months ago

    Im with Kagi on this. Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public. This person is projecting how fragile their argument is by reacting this way.

    Vlad was doing the right thing discussing it in private first before they probably address this stupid attempt at causing drama. I read all of the shit they posted and it sounds to me like they are nitpicking/strawmanning AI features which are very VERY optional.

    • AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 months ago

      Yeah kind of, but the CEO needs to learn that not everyone will like their products, you cant convince everyone.

      The person said that they dont want to engage with the discussion, then the CEO should have just let it be.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        0·
        7 months ago

        This is the second CEO to be a weirdo to a random person in the past month. First it was the Tumblr CEO, now it’s the Kagi one.

        Kagi was already in hot water for ignoring its paying customers’ previous complaints, so this whole “I really want to know your opinion, we are a human first company!” thing really sounds disingenuous after the same CEO overruled away all criticism or tried shuffling it away from public channels and onto his much more closed-off Discord.

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    7 months ago

    Conflicted! Cory Doctorow just endorsed it & I’m way less smart than that person so i usually do what they say :\

    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
      0·
      7 months ago

      it’s very likely that Cory didn’t have enough time to do research, visit the company’s Discord, and so on.

        • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
          1·
          7 months ago

          when it’s listed as one of the company’s official communication channels with the owner of the company frequently participating, then I sure as hell am going to judge the company by it.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
    0·
    7 months ago

    I am suspicious of anything I see being pushed as heavily as Kagi is pushed by it’s alleged users.

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    0·
    7 months ago

    Kagi is one of the least trustworthy companies I’ve seen recently. I know it has fans, but it constantly talks out of both sides of its mouth.

    Turns out Kagi does do advertising

    Kagi does not give a solitary damn about privacy as the average person understands it.

    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.

    Kagi lied in its emails.

    “AI is mentioned zero times”

    …is clearly incorrect.

    There’s quite a lot more to distrust about a company that wants to lock you into a filter bubble.

    • Vexz@kbin.social
      1·
      7 months ago

      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 privacy@lemmy.ml, not anonymity@lemmy.ml 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.