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?
It is if you decide to give it to them. If it’s a voluntary feature and not pure data collection, that’s the difference. Which means if you don’t want to take the risk, you don’t provide that data. I am sure you understand the difference between this and the data collection as a necessary condition to provide the service.
Which means you will simply decide not to use that feature and not give them that data?
It depends, really. When you choose which articles and newspapers you consider reputable, you consider that an echo chamber? I don’t. This is different from using profiling and data collection to provide you, without your knowledge or input, with content that matches your preference. Curating the content that I want to find online is different from Meta pushing only posts that statistically resonate with me based on the behavioral analysis they have done on top of the data collected, all behind the scenes. I don’t see where the dystopia is if I can curate my own content through tools. This is very different from megacorps curating our content for their own profit.
I think there may be a miscommunication here, because I fundamentally also find great distaste with
… Because based on their manifesto, that’s exactly what Kagi wants to do with you as a search engine; show you the things it thinks you want to see.
Every giant corporation has a privacy policy; the same could be said for what Mark Zuckerberg calls the “dumb fucks” who use Facebook.
no, based on your interpretation of the manifesto. I already mentioned that the direction that kagi has taken so far is to give the user the option to customize the tools they use. So it’s not kagi that shows you the thing you want to see, but you, who tell kagi the things who want to see. I imagine a future where you can tune the AI to be your personal assistance, not the company.
It is not having a policy that matters, obviously, it’s what inside it that does. Facebook privacy policy is exactly what you would expect, in fact.
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.