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[–] 60 points 10 months ago (17 children)

I remember getting pissed that they (Bing, Google, doesn't matter) put one "sponsored" link as the first result. It got me a few times before I started double checking URLs. Now the first page of results is practically useless ads not even related to the query most of the time. Fucking infuriating. Even Qwant will put multiple ads in if you search for a thing. I'm not biting the bullet for another subscription just yet, but paid Kagi lookin' finer by the day.

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago* (5 children)

    I will never use Kagi because requiring an account makes associating search queries with you trivial, though I don't doubt it is a useful service.

    Mullvad Leta was nice while it lasted, but an easy replacement is DuckDuckGo HTML. As the name suggests, it doesn't require JS, reducing the attack surface and routes of browser fingerprinting. I do acknowledge that the search results suck about as much as Google, so I need to be creative with search queries.

    A better option is a self hosted meta search engine like SearXNG or 4get. I get that the branding of 4get is off-putting, but it doesn't require JS for frontend and is much simpler/leaner/reliable than SearXNG. Self hosted search engines are also only useful (imho) if used by a large group (as a public instance) to blend in, or behind a VPN that rotates frequently. This is to avoid association to you.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    Agreed, just started using Kagi last week

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  • [–] 20 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    The AI stuff is putting me off though. I didn't see an option to not subscribe to that. Hell, I'd pay the same rate just without the AI parts if I could.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I was more annoyed by their base tier having such a low monthly search count. It feels low to purposefully push people to their higher tier.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Long term, if you want good privacy respecting services, you will need to pay for them directly. Free anything is not sustainable unless they monetize it by selling your data or serving you advertisements, which will lead to selling your data. If their revenue is dependent on you believing that the service is worth paying for, then they are incentivized to improve their service and maintain your trust. 

    The free tier high enough that you can get an idea of how well it works, but of course you're not meant to stay on the free tier, it's a trial.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I’m not talking about the free tier, I’m saying 300 searches a month for 5 bucks wasn’t worth it to me. I’m not willing to pay 120 a year for a search engine. One cent a search and they would have my five a month.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Oh yeah I didn't even consider the base tier, I'd blow through the searches inside of a week.

    For my part, it's just enforcing something I'd do anyway, I've got monthly recurring donations of $5-10 for a bunch of open source projects that I find useful, particularly ones by solo devs, so, it's not much of a stretch for me.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    I’ve used kagi’s ai stuff like… twice, maybe. They are fully opt-in and unobtrusive. For reference, this is their ai philosophy: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html

    This seems reasonable to me, though perhaps not perfect. If you don’t want your money going towards ai development at all… IDK. I don’t think they train their own models for what it’s worth, so I think you can avoid paying ai companies by simply not using the ai parts of kagi.

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