For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi. Its search results are…fine, no worse than others, and it’s ad-free, stated privacy as a primary goal, and seemed to have a better ethical sense than its competitors.
Kagi recently started using some services provided by Brave, a company run by immensely objectionable people. Kagi community members rightly raised concerns about this.
I was curious to see Kagi’s response. This is a tricky question that requires a thoughtful, careful response. Their response would be telling: not just about the question of Brave, but about their general ethical outlook.
I’m sympathetic to Kagi’s dilemma. This company may well provide useful services. And it is impossible to completely avoid engaging with people and companies who do harm in the world; that is our reality.
We can’t always disengage. What we •can• do, at a bare minimum, is think carefully about how we engage, and make wise decisions (as businesses and as individuals) that take into account our indirect impact on the world.
Again, these community concerns merit a thoughtful response.
@mattly@inthehands I’ve been trying to reason with people in their discord server…it’s kinda wild how much it embodies toxic tech culture. “These people are woke” and “stop shoving LGBTQ issues down our throats” are actual responses I’m encountering.
To be clear these people are not the dev team (so far), but I would nuke the entire server if I was hosting a community like that
@wonkothesane@mattly@inthehands yeah, kinda sad how that "shoving" comment is still there, but Vlad has been removing any new comments and just directs people to DM him instead. saw a thread where two people were criticizing the company's response disappear before my eyes last night.
By its nature it cuts to the heart of things and forces conversations in a more well-informed direction. Used properly it is so friggin hard to argue with.
It really is something, what a well dropped meme can do to deflate the arguments (and replies) of certain kinds of trolls. Lots of memes try to be that, but the goose really does it best.
My dude, politics were deeply intertwined with tech long before I wrote my first line of code back in 1982. You don’t get to opt out. That choice isn’t even on the table. You interact with humans, you interact with politics.
Vlad’s post is a historically ignorant, pants-on-head-stupid answer to a serious question. When I read it, I hear, “We’re not ethically mature enough to think about our social responsibility, so we’ve given ourselves permission to take no responsibility at all.”
Politics has been inexorably intertwined with tech ever since ancient hominids used a tool to accomplish a task for the first time hundreds of thousands of years ago.
But ALSO, people's objections to the Brave leadership aren't "political" disagreements unless you want to consider people's human rights "political".
@JessTheUnstill Yup. And…I guess I do consider people’s human rights “political” inasmuch as there are always ways human rights are under threat in any society — and since “politics” is the word for “the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals,” well, then, politics is the word for how we fight to protect (or destroy) those rights. (Similar thoughts to yours from different angle, I think.)
I mean, at •best• that’s what I hear. At worst, I suspect that Kagi’s leadership is sympathetic to (or fully in bed with) the right-wing politics of Brave, and is using a claim of being apolitical as cover for their own politics. That would be par for the course when somebody gives this sort of “I’m staying out of politics” excuse for their politically charged actions.
When I give a company access to all of my searches, I’m giving them an •extraordinary• degree of trust. Earning that trust from me requires a keen ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility that never shrinks into the shadows and says “Not our problem! Not our responsibility!” when market forces raise ethical questions.
I want a company with a moral compass and a spine.
@inthehands Sorry, I don’t think such a company exists or can exist. Companies are not people. Companies are entities that do what they are legally permitted to do for the sole purpose of maximizing profit for shareholders and enduring to do it again and again. That is their obligation and it dominates over any other concern. It is a grave mistake to expect human virtue from a corporation. They will ignore ethical requirements not enshrined in law or market forces.
I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.
Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
@inthehands how about a sidestep? For anything that requires breadth I use DevonAgent. Put enough effort for inclusions and exclusions it can be handy. The only problem is for deep searches (go five layers deep on links) it takes hours
you'd hope that each one of these companies would have a link on their homepage with large bold text like: "how we make our money and what our business motives are".
> well, we don't really know how we're going to make money in the long term, but for now, we're getting all of our money from one extremely rich man.
> You will certainly not regret having your search company funded entirely by one extremely rich man.
I dunno about that, it appears that they actually mean NSFW content. if you search for "pornhub" or some female straight porn actress' names you get no results (with a message saying that the results may contain violence or pornography), but "scruff" and "grindr" display the gay dating apps' websites as the first result.
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Not familiar with Kagi, but the ethical dilemma is old as the ages. Something is developed with the best of intentions, or at least marketed as such. It gains traction, and the idealism of the founders is tested over and over again with progressively greater incentive to join the dark side. Eventually the magnitude of the payday is just too great, the deal is struck, and "don't be evil" goes out the window.
@mastodonmigration For me, the Brave question was only a question — but the ineptitude of this response suggests to me that either (1) the founder is not ready to play with the grown-ups or (2) the founder is secretly terrible. At this point, even if they pulled the Brave relationship, I’d still be out. This is not somebody ready for prime time.
Think you are right. No idea about this particular case, but imagine the founder(s) to be a technical sort, maybe kind of unsophisticated, perhaps young. Coded up a cool thing and got it going. Now, things change. They start to be approached by some real sharks who puff them up and tell them how big it could get. They are completely unprepared to play in this league, and boom it's done.
@inthehands i suspect that just like mozilla and any other niche operator facing the concentration of power and money in bigtech they dont have many options. Money is scarce for wannabee disruptors of the worst cartel in history, existentially scarce.
Not excusing any choices, just pondering the conditions under which they are made.
Imho we are now in a phase where only search-as-public-good can change the status quo. Essentially only governments/states can kill the monster they created.
@phiofx Yeah. As per upthread, I’m actually quite sympathetic to whatever forces might be pushing them to collaborate with a highly objectionable company. It’s the response that’s the deal-killer. Even more than search quality, what I was paying Kagi for was •trust•. That’s damaged now; these people are at best too immature to be trustworthy. At that point, what am I paying for?!
@inthehands What's most disappointing here is the lack of seeing how this clashes with #Kagi 's supposed mission of "humanizing the web".
You can't do that while pretending ethics aren't part of it. Or by defending your business relationship with someone who denies basic human rights to some.
I think it'd be recoverable for Kagi if they end up revisiting the issue, but right now, I'm disappointed a.f.
@larsmb@inthehands They've announced changes on their Discord, which are limited to: allow users to filter their result sources, potentially not pay Brave and instead ask for free API access.
@kzhe@larsmb
Given that my deal-killing objection was not actually them using Brave’s services but rather their unwillingness to think about the underlying issues, I can’t say that this “we’ll let you cover your eyes too” response addresses my concerns at all.
@inthehands Kind of in agreement. However, I hope they are going to think about the issues now. It'd have been best if they had done so before, obviously ...
@larsmb@kzhe
What’s turned me off is the incapacity for thought. Whatever they decide about Brave now that they’re under pressure, I just don’t see a company that’s ready to play with the grown-ups.
Here’s the thing: the Brave issue is relatively minor compared to the ethical questions a search company is going to face. And they’ll often face those questions out of public sight, and free from public pressure.
@inthehands Yes 😑
But I'm not sure I'm trusting others more either.
I do fully understand your points though and appreciate them. I'm just not yet sure what the truly better option is for me.
(I signed up very recently and am paid up for the month anyway, so I'll ponder until renewal) @kzhe
ADDENDUM 1/2: Kagi is apparently now flailing around trying to find a quick and dirty fix for the uproar: “maybe you can disable Brave in your search results or we’ll try to make their services free or something” etc etc.
My deal-killing objection was not actually them using Brave’s services, but rather their •unwillingness to think• about the underlying issues in doing so. I can’t say that this “we’ll let you cover your eyes too” sort of response addresses my concerns at all.
ADDENDUM 2/2: A search engine is going to face some of the toughest ethical problems a tech company can face. And they’ll face most of those problems ••out of public sight••.
I’m interested in the people, their thought process, their temperament. How do they engage with ethical questions? Perfection is impossible, but will they at least •try•? Do they have the capacity to try? Do they even give a shit?
Or do they actively •refuse• to give a shit and call that a virtue? Apparently so for Kagi.
@inthehands Aside from everything else, it seems a total misread of or disregard for the choices their own customers are making in subscribing. Efficacy is part of it, sure, but ethics is as well!
@inthehands@donaldball Oh that! Didn't realize that this discussion is still going on, even after Kagi quickly pledged to introduce a users choice feature for which search backend to use.
It seems that obviously some prefer to use a backend from a company that produces AI killing robots for the international military complex than one from a company with a CEO against gay marriage, and that is their total right.
@inthehands I'm not sure I understand the part where you start rejecting people because they reject people. For me, the more general view is to hope to include everyone. That's not possible, I know. But in order to be inclusive, I feel an obligation to try to be inclusive. Yeah, that includes idiots, bigots, users of Kagi and haters of it too and also people who just don't care. I hope you feel welcome, too.
I thought it was pretty OK at boosting a handful of sites it appears to have special support for -- Wikipedia, Reddit, and StackOverflow, for instance -- but admittedly, if I was building a tool to replace Google, I would see it as unethical to boost those specific sites.
@inthehands I’ve been on a paid plan with Kagi for a year now but I’m not going to renew. Back to DuckDuckGo, I suppose… There’s a distinct lack of search engines that are just… decent.
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