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Thoughts on Kagi?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
108 points (82.5% liked)
Privacy
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Care to elaborate on the comments? I haven't read any of them.
Some interesting moderation choices that suggest a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community, a business partnership with Brave, and a really shitty take refusing to add help numbers for self-harm related searches.
You can get the cliff notes of it from this post and comment to it: https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834
This made me sad. I actually thought I found the search engine I was looking for and now I get this shit.
It is indeed disappointing.
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
I would argue that the new answer is still bad.
The search results were top notch before adding Brave, indicating to me that they aren’t really needed.
“People complain about all of them” is probably a factual statement, which is why evaluating each source independently is valuable. I don’t think it justifies completely dismissing criticism.
I know what you are referring to with regards to the LGBTQ+ matter, but the only source is the user who reported it (with a screenshot that did not show anything), the same user who used some completely dishonest and bad faith arguments* to slander the CEO guy. I wouldn't take that at face value and I have absolutely no problem to see, instead, a reason to moderate their comments.
* the CEO of kagi has a website with a "best country ranking", which is just a stupid page with 15 criterias chosen to rank which country is the greatest. The argument was that the guy must be a racist/white suprematist because the top countries for the most part were white (and wealthy. Duh). Apparently they were especially pissed about the fact that he decided to include the Olympic medals pro capite, despite the fact that it's one of the few metrics in which first world countries were not at the top.
the screenshot shows a thread on Kagi's Discord that's been deleted almost immediately after that screenshot has been taken, while other user's calls to "stop shoving LGBTQ down our throats" have been left up.
The screenshot shows an off-topic comment that complains about other comments being "left up", and the CEO that answers that nothing has been deleted, in fact (I suppose in regards to the topic). The thread in the screenshot was (going to be) deleted because it's off-topic, it's a meta-conversation that doesn't add anything to the general discussion, if not noise and chaos (and tbh, following long conversation in discord is already terrible as it is).
I guess it's the word of two different people in that Mastodon thread vs the word of the guy who moved all discussion to his personal Discord server to begin with.
The second person (I think) referred to the thread in the screenshot when they said "I saw it disappearing live". I have no problems believing that the guy deleted that thread, it's an off-topic thread. What I have problem to believe is that the guy specifically deleted comments from queer folks (which is the point of this post). And again, the person who started the Mastodon thread is someone that - in my view - has no credibility at all, considering the completely dishonest way in which they carried out the conversation.
Not sure what the screenshot you posted is supposed to prove. He closed a thread on the kagifeedback site asking to move the discussion (if needed) in Kagi Discord, where - in fact - happened (although with very little benefit for anybody). AFAIK it's not "his personal Discord" server, it's Kagi's server, and I believe most of the conversation (including the one in the "incriminating" screenshot) happened in
#general. I am really not sure what your point is.Either way, it doesn't matter what I believe. What I know is that the person making the Mastodon thread is someone in bad faith and with (in my opinion) completely bad takes. Someone who makes such a post, in my opinion is a moron.
It's much easier to stifle disagreement and feign objectivity after you silence a publicly accessible conversation and move it to a private Discord server. Discord makes it remarkably easy to censor comments without ever being able to prove they were there.
Even if we assume the Kagi CEO is totally blameless, he made a massive optical blunder by deciding to silence public criticism and shift it onto turf he controls even more tightly.
If you want to make the case that the two Mastodon users are liars, then you need to prove more than a personal disagreement. And so far, arguing about one of the hardest to define words in the English language is hardly proof.
There is a point that I am clearly failing to make.
All the disagreement about the brave stuff, about the topic that generated discussion is there. You can check for yourself in discord or on the forum. I also want to note that the forum post has been closed temporarily and reopened several times. It's not completely unreasonable to close a topic when the discussions are going completely off the rails, which in this case was happening (both critics and supporters did that).
That said, there is nothing that evidently shows the intention to stifle disagreement, including the request to move the discussion elsewhere (discord has tons of critical content even now). However, the user who started the thread wanted to discuss something else, which is not related to the discussion at hand, but related to how they moderated the discussion (claiming something we have no idea about. Were their comments really deleted? What was their content? Were they maybe violating some rule? Who knows what they wrote, maybe the insulted other users directly). We have no proof whatsoever that they censored comments from queer folks specifically (which is the whole argument of the thread, both mastodon one and the screenshot attached), there is only that user claiming they did because their comments were allegedly deleted (maybe it's true, but again, who knows why). Considering that there is plenty of criticism still present in both discord and the forum, I don't see how I need to suspend the judgment to call that claim bullshit, because I can objectively see that criticism was not censored. In addition to that, I can also make a judgment based on character. That user used completely bullshit claims to fabricate accusations, in that very same context. The whole point of that threat was a smear campaign against that guy, and they didn't bother at all to repeat what they posted, for example, or make a proper argument. They just claimed something with a screenshot that doesn't give any information and other supporting arguments that are even more ridiculous (the country site and the "interpretation" of a sentence that I quoted above).
I am not even sure why there is the need to discuss anything coming from that person. If that was a conservative/trump supporter making some claim with analogue arguments, they would be laughed out of Mastodon (rightfully). And that is the only source about the attitude towards LGBTQ+ folks. Don't you think that before making such a broad statement, we should have at least some consistent pattern? A bunch of examples that show the attitude or something like that?
And no, it's not "two users" because, as I said before, from what I understand the other user referred to the thread in the screenshot, not to the "critical comments" deleted before, which we have no idea about.
It's interesting that in your previous month-old comment you mentioned "a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment" from the CEO, which confused me, because the Mastodon thread also includes the content of a comment the CEO tried to scrub.
But you did write this gem:
...appeal to ethnicity is pretty funny
That is not what Ethnicity is.
We are talking about the same thread, right?
https://nyan.lol/@zicklepop/111716010186646210
This one.
There is no comment that the "CEO tried to scrub". There is only a discord screenshot of a meta-conversation about the fact that the user claimed their comment was deleted, and the CEO answers that nothing was deleted to avoid this very same accusation, and then says he will delete this (the meta) thread (because it's off-topic).
Not sure what you find funny though, however,
referred to:
Which is completely arbitrary. Even wanting to read the comment of the CEO with malice, he said "politics".
This has nothing to do with ethnicity, it has to do with words and meaning. Calling someone a fascist for such matter is completely bananas and - frankly - disrespectful towards the people who died fighting the actual fascism. The CEO can be an idiot, or a tech bro, but he expressed his views and let others express theirs. This is pretty evident from their forum.
Oops. I was looking a few comments up in this very Lemmy thread, somebody linked to this other Lemmy thread.
I do think it is super important to discuss whether a tech bro is just making a quick cash grab product in order to get bought out by a larger corporation, though. As seen with the Skiff tech bros.
Yeah, that thread linked (https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834) references the same Mastodon thread. I know because I followed all of this few months back.
Oh yeah, this is definitely interesting, but...while email is somewhat binding as a service, a search engine is not. Give me 2 minutes and I have changed the default search engine on all my devices away from Kagi. If that will be the case (despite the fact that so far, I have no reason to think it is the case), it will be super easy to move away. I think if I were a Skiff customer without a custom domain, I would still be crying instead.
“ a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community,”
Are you saying that the GUI doesn’t have a setting for rainbow coloured buttons?
op provided a link. maybe you should click it?
The link just goes to a comment that links to a screenshot of Discord where someone complains vaguely about moderation to the CEO. I wouldn't exactly call that evidence. More harboring a personal grudge
I think the fact the CEO only wants to handle criticism in a private, controlled Discord server already says a lot about how the conversation is going.
Wow, some people need to lighten up. I’m an ally. It was a joke based on the word ‘support’ and the subject of software. Fucks sake.
If it was just a joke in poor taste, why not talk to the person who took it seriously instead
Apols, I was just continuing the thread.
It wasn’t “in poor taste” just riffing off ‘software’ and ‘support’. I tried to edit my original comment to add to it but couldn’t.
Edit: fucks sake people, lighten up. I’m an ally.
then maybe you should realise that the LGBTQ folks have heard too many serious remarks similar to yours to consider them funny.
Oh fuck off.
10/10, great allyship. remember to also make some kitchen jokes, and then act offended and keep repeating that you're a feminist when women call you out on it!
My gay best mate would’ve laughed his arse off. But whatever. He’s actually got a sense of humour and doesn’t take it all so seriously.
Bye.