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Thoughts on Kagi?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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I stumbled onto some comments about Kagi angling to become an AI-first search engine that actually brags about putting you in a filter bubble. From Kagi's manifesto:
One YouTube video suggests a grim future: "Everybody has a feed uniquely tailored to them. Nobody talks about their favorite YouTubers anymore, because everybody watches different content farms. All the real creators quit a long time ago."
Food for thought. I don't like the idea of these filter bubbles.
ETA: I didn't realize it at the time but they also promise data collection for
If you're looking for an open source search engine that's building its own data set, one exists (and it's totally open source and free).
https://stract.com/
If you're looking for something that collates other engines' contents, SearXNG is also open source and free.
https://searx.space
Kagi isn't really unique in any way here; their most unique quality appears to be linking your searches to an account, requesting money, and promising not to sell your data at a later date.
... Okay, I just tried Stract, and its results are... Mostly not helpful.
My understanding is that Kagi makes an effort to tell you how they anonymize your search so they can't tie it back to your account afterwards, whereas Searx is more dependent solely on the goodwill of whoever is hosting the instance. Both are good faith dependent in the end, but one has a profit motive for keeping that faith.
Edit: I hope Stract gets there and takes off one day, but today doesn't seem to be that day for me.
The privacy policy is also a legally binding document, not just a promise that the company does. If they are found violating it, the GDPR fines are going to hurt and they would lose the customer base in a blink. Their privacy policy right now is exemplary, I am one of those who read policies before using a product and kagi's is literally the best I have seen: clear, detailed, specific and most importantly, good from the privacy perspective.
There's some tradeoff here, keep garbage out and relevant results in. Definitely want to stay connected with others and share knowledge (such as websites that provide quality info)