I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.
Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.
Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?
I’ve been quoting the Kagi Corp manifesto. In fact, across this entire thread, you’ve had nothing but total charity for the corporate entity and its leadership, even accusing eyewitnesses of the CEO’s bad behavior of being liars.
But your comment did allow me to find another corporate manifesto, so let’s take another crack at this.
You said this is bad:
Kagi Corp says this is good:
What you say is bad for Facebook, is what Kagi Corp wants to do.
Yes, but you have drawn conclusions that are not in the quotes.
Let me quote:
There is nothing here that says “we will collect information and build the thing for you”. The message seems pretty clearly what I am claiming instead: “You tell the AI what it wants”. Even if we take this as “something that is going to happen” (which is not necessarily), it clearly talks about tools to which we can input data, not tools that collect data. The difference is substantial, because data collection (a-la facebook) is a passive activity that is built-in into the functionality of the tool (which I can’t use it without). Providing data to have functionalities that you want is a voluntary act that you as a user can do when you want and only for the category of data that you want, and does not preclude your use of the service (in fact, if you pay for a service and don’t even use the features, it’s a net positive for the company if that’s how they make money!).
What I witnessed is the ranting of a person in bad faith. You are giving credit to it simply because it fits your preconception. I criticized it based on elements within their own arguments, and concluded that for me that’s not believable. If that’s your only proof of “bad behavior” and that’s enough for you, good for you.
Let me reiterate on the above:
Now, let’s be clear because I have absolutely no intention to spending my evening repeating the same argument. Do you see the difference between the following:
?
If you don’t, and you don’t see the difference between the two scenarios above, there is no point for me to continue this conversation, we fundamentally disagree. If you do see the difference, then you have to appreciate that the nature of the data collection moves the agency from the company to the user, and a different system of incentive in place creates an environment in which the company doesn’t have to screw you over in order to earn money.
It’s pretty clear that you only draw your conclusions from a predetermined trust in Kagi, a brand loyalty.
The CEO is good, therefore when he moved a public conversation to a private Discord server, anything he says about the private conversation is now true, and anyone who disagrees with him is a liar.
Kagi Corp is good, so feeding data to it is done in a good way, but Facebook Corp is bad so feeding data to it is done in a bad way.
Kagi’s efforts to show you only things you want to see are good, because Kagi itself is good. When Facebook does it, it is bad.
As I said before, I also draw this conclusion based on the direction that they have currently taken. Like the features that actually exist right now, you know. You started this whole thing about dystopian future when talking about lenses, a feature in which the user chooses to uprank/downrank websites based on their voluntary decision. I am specifically telling that this has been the general attitude, providing tools so that users can customize stuff, and therefore I am looking at that vision with this additional element in mind. You instead use only your own interpretation of that manifesto.
You are just throwing the cards up. If you can’t see the difference between me having the ability to submit data, when I want, what I want and Facebook collecting data, there are only two options: you don’t understand how this works, or you are in bad faith. Which one it is?
The “lens” feature isn’t mentioned in either Kagi manifesto. That’s why I consider the manifesto important: it shows what they want to produce and how willing they are to collect user data in order to produce it.
Let me quote Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook:
So? It exists, unlike the vision in the manifesto. Since the manifesto can be interpreted in many ways (despite what you might claim), I think this feature can be helpful to show the Kagi intentions, since they invested work into it no? They could have build data collection and automated ranking based on your clicks, they didn’t.
Not sure what the argument is. The fact that people voluntary give data (for completely different reasons that do not benefit those users directly, but under the implicit blackmail to use the service)? I have no objections anyway against Facebook collecting the data that users submit voluntarily and that is disclosed by the policy. The problem is in the data inferred, in the behavioral data collected, which are much more sneaky, and in those collected about non users (shadow profiles through the pixel etc.). You putting Facebook and an imaginary future Kagi in the same pot, in my opinion, is completely out of place.
I love how you downplay what Kagi said they want their product to become. Elsewhere, you insist we must trust their privacy policy with blind faith. These two opinions are contradictory; you want people to simultaneously believe and disbelieve Kagi.
It doesn’t make sense… unless all your opinions stem from the presumption that Kagi is unquestionably good.
Regarding “Dumb Fucks”: Zuckerberg described exactly what Kagi Corp wants their users to do.
The manifesto is actually a future vision. And again, you are interpreting it in your own way.
At the same time, you are completely ignoring:
Because obviously who cares of facts, right? You have your own interpretation of a sentence which starts with “in the future we will have” and that counts more than anything.
Also, can you please share to me the quote where I say that I need to blindly trust the privacy policy? Thanks.
Because I remember to have said in various comments that the privacy policy is a legally binding document, and that I can make a report to a data protection authority if I suspect they are violating them, so that they will be audited. Also, guess what! The manifesto is not a legally binding document that they need to respond of, the privacy policy is. Nobody can hold them accountable if “in the future there will not be” all that stuff that are mentioned in the manifesto, but they are accountable already today for what they put in the privacy policy.
Do you see the difference?
No, I’m engaging in a good faith effort to find the corporation’s words, while you downplay and reinterpret them at every turn.
I know you won’t bother to look, but for my own personal amusement, Kagi Corp is clear in page after page they care about AI not privacy. Here’s a third page demonstrating this:
And this is rather ironic too: