I was an early adopter of Kagi, and paid for about two years. But somehow I missed that they give money to Yandex, and I felt too guilty continuing to give them money because I want to support the people of Ukraine. So I cancelled recently.
If Kagi stopped using Yandex, or somehow allowed accounts to configure a way so that their funds do not go to Yandex (unsure if this is even possible to split accounts this way) then I would sign back up immediately.
This has always struck me as pretty weak. Yes, paying Yandex indirectly results in paying taxes to the Russian government. But people are rarely so dogmatic about these matters. There are lots of despotic and tyrannical regimes in the world, under which companies must operate because people live there who must try to make a living. Punishing the people at those companies because they're obligated ot pay taxes to their rulers strikes me as rather ridiculous.
Kagi is awesome. I appreciate the Yandex results. I'm not a big fan of Russia.
> There are lots of despotic and tyrannical regimes in the world, under which companies must operate because people live there who must try to make a living.
Right, but there's lots of companies in the world. Lots more than there are tyrannical regimes. Lots more than there are total regimes! We're not individually obligated to support each of them, when they financially support things we find abhorrent.
Yes, people buy oil from middle eastern tyrannies, everything from China, things made from dubiously sourced raw materials etc. - but they somehow draw the line at one particular conflict or nation (not always Russia).
Well, you have to start drawing lines somewhere, and focus on an issue or two that are important to you. You will only end up spreading yourself thin (and not making an impact at all with anything) if you try to draw every line "correctly".
Holding and adhering to personal principles is the opposite of weak. You might disagree with that person's decision, but that does not make them (or their decision) weak.
Yandex isn't just an honest business trying to survive in Putin's Russia, it actively manipulates results to push Kremlin propaganda. It only returned negative coverage about Navalny and called it an "experiment" when it was caught. It actively blocks images of Putin when you search for "bunker grandpa", a common nickname for him. It replaces links to the anti-Putin Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps with links to FSB-controlled honeypots. Its largest shareholders are Russian oligarchs, state-owned banks and oil companies.
Maybe they have to do it to survive, who knows, but you don't have to use their services or products that resell their services.
> The job of a search engine is to produce the most relevant search results, period. Kagi excels at this precisely because we remain unimpressed by world politics. The moment 'politics' becomes a factor in search results is the moment I stop working on a search engine.
I want to stand on principle too. I switched from Google to Kagi about a year ago. If we're strictly comparing Google and Kagi, I consider Google far worse.
If you want to support the people of Ukraine, the best thing you can do right now is give them money to buy more drones. This will have much more of an effect than Kagi's Yandex integration.
I recommend https://dzygaspaw.com personally, but there are many good crowdfunding organizers.
Does there exist another source for a good, broad web index that can provide results like mid-'00s Google?
I use DDG mostly but if I need to actually search the web I go to Yandex (I don't have Kagi... at least not yet). I don't know of another place that can do that.
Would you consider boycotting Google or Amazon because of their relationship with the Israeli military? I avoid Amazon, but it's pretty tough to avoid Google.
The Government of Israel, as it currently stands, is absolutely a threat to Europe.
It has brought genocide, concentration camps and forced starvation back into the Overton window for state actors pursuing security objectives. This should terrify everyone, whether inside Europe or not.
In the UK, simply expressing support for a protest group is now imprisonable under anti-terror legislation. Germany is dishing out fines and deportations for as little as holding up signs.
Post-war Europe is ostensibly built on rules and norms around human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The behaviour of the state of Israel, and our governments' craven support for it, is causing rapid democratic backsliding and laying the groundwork for our next round of atrocities.
Whatever one's moral perspective, or position on the middle east, this concerns everyone.
Ok... Are we just naming random countries that also do terrorism now? Inserting butwhaddaboudda YEWW ESS into literally every conversation is tiring. Yes, the US does bad stuff. It doesn't make funding terrorism by Kagi less bad.
If Kagi stopped using Yandex, or somehow allowed accounts to configure a way so that their funds do not go to Yandex (unsure if this is even possible to split accounts this way) then I would sign back up immediately.