Kagi is now partnering with Brave
chaos.social
Quite a controversial decision.... I love Kagi though, but I don't understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.
Quite a controversial decision.... I love Kagi though, but I don't understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.
Suddenly I am a lot less interested in Kagi.
They are using brave search results, like they do with others. Frankly, you could build totally identical arguments (and to be honest, much more serious) for "partnering" with Google and Microsoft, but then the product wouldn't exist and wouldn't be as good.
The relationship with the Brave founder is so indirect, that this - to me - feels like an argument from someone who is looking for reasons to get angry. Kagi probably uses AWS (or other clouds), which funds Amazon (known for terrible worker rights), funds Google, fossil fuel industry, etc. It's a sad reality, but you simply can't exist nowadays in the moral and ethical way many people would like. You can, only if you are a privileged one. Technologically speaking, Google can probably do it, for example (own hardware, DCs, tech etc.). We can choose to fight those that directly support political agendas we disagree with, or we can damage the smallest players by demanding they will be 100% pure and ethical by not having any relationship with those with those agendas.
In my personal opinion, such unrealistic ethical requirements end up being a reactionary choice as they will ultimately impede new - better - players to emerge and will leave the existing - worse - dominating.
That's an excellent point. Never thought about it that way.
Google allows Brave to run ads, so by using Google you're promoting homophobia... Microsoft allows Brave to run Windows, so by using any Microsoft product you're promoting homophobia...
I assume you're demonstrating the argument, not actually arguing it
Probably because brave is kind of the king of advertising in the space.
They managed to sell tracking activity for monetary gain as a privacy centric product.
How is that relevant here?
I’ve no stake in either Kagi or Brave (and have my own issues with Brave and their CEO), but “partnership” seems like a stretch of definition here assuming this is in reference to the Brave Search API being added as another source for search results. Am I missing something here?
Kagi December 28, 2023 Release Notes
the part where Brave Search API is paid, and some people (including myself) don't want their money to contribute to Brave's business.
To better understand (and definitely not dismissing your opinion), was Brave where you drew the line as a customer or was Google, Amazon, etc also of concern where Kagi pays for services?
A lot of people really don't like Eich. When he was promoted from CTO to CEO of Mozilla, half of Mozilla's board resigned (one said it was because she refused to be a member of the board that appointed him, the other two didn't say why they resigned) and there was a massive campaign to get rid of him including websites showing popups to all FireFox users telling them to use another browser - specificially because of Eich.
He lasted 11 days as CEO of Mozilla, and founded Brave after leaving.
Since then, he's done things with crypto and said things about covid which have angered people even more.
You can count me as one of those people so don’t get me wrong; I’m all for not supporting Brave or Eich. I was just curious why this instance where Kagi is paying to use Brave’s search API (which, IMO, doesn’t carry the weight of being labeled a partnership any more than me being a partner with Sony because I pay for PS+) among many other companies/products is the dealbreaker for those that use Kagi. And there may be more to the story (or maybe there is an actual partnership I’ve missed) so I’m open to being more informed.
But if thats the root of the controversy, I can respect that even if I don’t necessarily align with the level of outcry here.
I dislike Brave because they cultivated a not-so-deserved reputation. I see newcomers to privacy being recommended this and it's just sad.
Brave is great, it even lets you sync your browser session without having to use an email. And their android app lets you watch youtube vid without ads and in the background.
It along librewolf are the only browsers that come with good default privacy settings.
Edit: Looks like I struck a nerve on some people lol
You're comment implied it's a good privacy centric browser, which is wrong.
It actually is, it comes with good fingerprinting protection by default.
https://privacytests.org/
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Who is the brave employee that runs it? privacytest is actually a open source test that you can run in your browser and has its own repo.
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https://github.com/privacytests/privacytests.org
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Good fingerprinting protection != good privacy.
Alright what makes a browser good for privacy if fingerprinting does not count? (it does but I want to hear what you will say).
TL;DR: All chromium based browsers are shit. Switch to hardened firefox or librewolf
I am not sure what you understand under fingerprinting (you literally can get the same fingerprinting protection by enabling the resistFingerprinting configuration in about:config in Firefox). Also fingerprinting protection, by ifself, isn't enough to make a browser private. Plus I am not sure how anyone can even trust Brave's browser when they are sketchy as fuck. Not only did they do creepy stuff like url injection, but also now have those weird ads and they are also into crypto which is not a good sign. I still fail to understand why people won't appreciate Firefox browsers. The same functionality can be achieved if you spend literally like 5 minutes on it. Is it an issue with being lazy or just being not informed about it. Though I still do not recommend the stock firefox you can get from the official site. You're better off installing something like Librewolf if you are someond that looks into "privacy" out of the box or hardened firefox with arkenfox's user.js for the most privacy you probably can get without breaking literally every website you visit.
I've used firefox for years, in fact I sitll have librewolf on my PC with a custom userChrome.css, but the browsing experience is only getting worse every year and mozilla only breaks userChrome with every new update.
I also mentioned librewolf in my original comment already.
They are open source lol
How do you sync your browser sessions without having to use an email? This is what mostly keeps me on brave.
Also it really took me a while to get librewolf to block the cookie prompts from websites, because I had to go into the ublock origin settings and find the filter that blocks the cookie prompts, brave on the other hand does this automatically for you. As well as already having a built in dark mode, you don't have to install 6 different extensions which is what I have on librewolf to get it to work.
Also on linux firefox maps the alt+number keys to change tabs instead of using control+number keys, again on brave this comes by default, on firefox that is also another extension that needs to be added to fix that.
In fact can you even change the background color of the new tab page in firefox? On brave it is super easy, it even lets you use an image, on librewolf I had to use a custom userContent.css for something so basic wtf.
Also you didn't go into details on what makes a browser good for privacy, brave can even block scripts if we are talking about going beyond the default settings, which on librewolf you have to use an extension as well to achive that.
I drew the line at Brave.
Fair enough. IMO, Brave isn’t a big enough player compared to many other companies in the enterprise space used by Kagi (both that we know of as consumers and wouldn’t know of without being an employee with knowledge of their internal SaaS agreements) that Kagi’s specific use case of Brave singularly would have been the deal breaker (for me).
Personally, getting that granular with money flow quickly becomes untenable as a consumer as every business will, to some degree, end up paying for some level of service from the companies we hope to lessen the power of. As a consumer example, I may really dislike how Google is influencing the standards of consumer data privacy in the world and choose not to pay for or use Google products/services directly, but I couldn’t imagine boycotting all companies that use Google Workspace internally for email, docs, sheets, etc.
Kagi seems to be a main player that’s opening the conversation of paying for internet search when the world is used to a standard of “free” search, so saying they can’t utilize the existing search data sources is going to make that experience dead in the water. We need ripples if we hope for change.
Edit: sudneo‘s comment actually summed up my thoughts pretty well.
That’s a really easy conclusion to come to when you weren’t the one being targeted.
And that’s a lot of words to say this isn’t your issue so you aren’t doing anything about it. Nobody needs the hand wringing. You can just say it.
Care to expand? Not sure how anything I’ve said is hand wringing nor what you’re implying I should be doing.
Your entire comment can be boiled down to "I don't find this "tenable" and the issue isn't important to me relative to other issues".
That's fine. You can think that. Just go the brevity route next time. It respects the reader more than a wall of text.
I mean, you’re focused on minimizing a concluding thought around an informative dialogue originated by me asking about the perspectives of those feeling impacted by this (of which I’m not). I didn’t find the responses to be a waste of time to read so not sure why you felt that detracting from the discourse was to be your contribution rather than sharing your own perspective to further the group’s discussion.
It will be easier to sympathise with you if you explain how Brave has targeted you or impacted your life.
I’m not trying to convince. I’m trying to say use less words.
That is kinda disappointing. I had a distaste for Brave after all the initial controversy regarding the ad blocking, which only got worse from the crypto crap they now have in the browser.
I'll still keep paying for Kagi, but this is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. Let's hope at least the results get noticeably better.
Don't forget the Brave CEO being ousted from Mozilla for being massively homophobic, donating money to try to overturn the right for gay couples to be married.
E: and them injecting affiliate codes when you copy some links, tracking users. Particularly bad when they relentlessly market themselves as being private
Has he done more than giving 1000 USD in 2008? Any statement for example?
He's spoken out since and said he thinks homophobia is acceptable (in 2014). He's never said he was wrong - he doubled down on it saying people weren't being inclusive of people who hold homophobic views.
Ask yourself if you'd be angry if he spent money campaigning on giving, say, black people fewer rights. I'd imagine you'd be pissed off about that. So what's the difference? Why are you accepting of this?
It's particularly bad that he sells his product as being respectful of people's privacy, yet he wants the state to intervene in people's private lives and prevent them from having equal rights.
By all means, use Brave. I don't care. Use their crypto, use their affiliate links they inject into your browser, whatever. I just personally refuse to support someone who is unrepentantly homophobic.
These days it's easy to get label as -phohic
Cool story bro.
You don't get labeled as "phobic" for thinking that - you get labeled as "phobic" because you've made it, and your complete inability to mind your own business, your entire personality.
Doesn't make sense
He didn't support gay marriage in 2008. Neither did Obama, but he gets a free pass. Is Obama massively homophobic?
Firstly, fuck off with this misrepresentation. I can't be bothered with tedious whataboutism pushed purely to simp for a homophobic millionaire who actively wants people like me to be second class citizens.
He spent money to actively oppose LGBT people having equal rights. That's very different to merely not publicly supporting it in order to avoid backlash from the very people he had to win over to be elected.
One of those is spineless or, charitably, savvy politicking. The other is outright hateful.
And for the record, I'm not American. I couldn't give a shit about Obama. So if this is some kind of "um ackshully you supported Obama, owned much??" doesn't apply to me. Not that it was even a good argument anyway.
He hasn't come out and said that he was wrong or tried to make up for it in any way. He has in fact doubled down on his stance.
Didn't know he doubled down on it. When did he do that?
2014
He didn't comment on it in 2014
Yes he did. Stop defending homophobia.
Prove it, from what I've seen he didn't double down on it, but neither did he apologize for it.
Easy to find. Why don't you look for it on your precious Brave search engine?
Why are you so ardently defending a hateful piece of shit? One who also donated money to a politician who said that AIDS is a punishment from god and that it's right for gay people to be exterminated through disease?
Does it get your little dick hard when minority groups have fewer rights than you or something?
I did look for it and I didn't find him doubling down. You're the one making the claim, why don't you link me? Or maybe you're just bullshitting me
When did he double down?
2014
Didn't know he doubled down on it. When did he do that?
Has he made a statement to the contrary?
No, but he did do an interview years later where he doubled down, and complained that people weren't being inclusive of those with homophobic views.
Basically the "so much for the tolerant left! They're not even tolerant of my intolerance!" argument lol
Neither did the CEO of Grindr, later than that, lol
That's not a good look for them.
Kagi can go fuck right off with whatever guerilla marketing program keeps constantly putting it in my face.
It's clearly not organic growth, and I will never try it because now I don't trust it.
In fairness to Kagi, if you’re seeing a lot of it on Lemmy and Mastodon, that’s because nerds are gonna nerd. There’s a huge concentration of tech folks in those spaces and there’s a huge culture of prostelytization, “I know best so I must educate,” and “I just found this cool thing!” within the tech community. People remix the intros they got with their spin. Until the communities in these spaces significantly diversifies, you’ll see a ton of that. Kagi might be paying for some guerilla marketing; I chalk it up to tech oversharing.
In all fuck you to Kagi, Brandon Eich is the last person you want to attach your cart to for solid results. We should now expect explicitly paid results worse than Google that materially improve Eich, crypto bullshit through the roof, and a complete lack of privacy to Kagi who won’t share it so it’s totally cool guys.
they've just (as in yesterday, on Jan 5th) added a Lemmy/Kbin lens to their engine (meaning that it's easier to search specifically the Threadiverse):
https://kagi.com/changelog
I don't really think they've been playing some kind of a long guerilla con of advertising here for half a year and then adding a feature that would make searching more convenient for their supposed covert marketing department.
and if they did, the Brave decision is about to backfire on them.
It was organic, because Kagi is just better. the recent issue sucks though and I cancelled. Might uncancel though. Changes are rapid on the Kagi Discord.
I doubt Kagi actually spent money for guerilla marketing. I myself often recommend Kagi on Lemmy before this because it's actually good (and I certainly didn't get paid). Now I'm going wait and see how it develop before deciding if I'll recommend it to others again.
Nor should you, now that you know the project is beholden to scumbag money.
Capitalism ruins everything.
already cancelled my subscription and mentioned that when the form asked me why I was cancelling.
Brave has their own search index, that could be very useful for a search engine.
Because money.
Right. They flat out said the Brave API is cheaper.
They retracted the term "partner" as they are to Brave as they are to Google. I still might cancel but we were paying Google API fees already so hmmm
I had no idea (the CEO of) Brave was so bad 😢
I use Brave an don't understand the hate it gets. Seems like a good alternative to Chrome if you don't like ads. Can someone fill me in on where the hate comes from?
Edit: The people downvoting this comment instead of having a discussion are really winning me over to their side /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Collection_of_donations_on_behalf_of_content_creators
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Insertion_of_referral_codes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CEO_and_resignation
I wasn't aware of the tipping controversy. That's not a good look, but I don't use their crypto features (apart from IPFS every once in a while).
No tech company is squeaky clean in 2024, and Brave's baggage seems better than Chrome's.
firefox is a lot easier to use than brave imo (since in brave you have to change half the settings to get it to work well)
This hasn't been my experience
Firefox doesn't even come with ublock origin installed, brave has all the lists built in and will even ask you to block the cookie prompts as well without having to go the adblock settings.
There is also Vivaldi to consider.
Welcome to the linux world of ideology driven recommendations.
I fell for this crap when I switched from using nvidia to amd because the constant bashing that nvidia gets by linux users only to discover that hardware acceleration is so broken on amd that using the cpu yields better results lol.
Seems like a match made in heaven, a bigot and an asshole.
This is why federated FOSS solutions are the best.
This statement makes no sense. Federated search means nothing. Ultimately someone needs to scrape, index, store and retrieve data. At the moment, a handful can do it efficiently, and to have a wide coverage, engines use also other APIs. Kagi does this, for example, by combining Google and others (e.g. brave) with their own indexer.
How do you imagine a "federated" search would be any different? Using multiple APIs is effectively "federating".
As I said in another comment, to be fully ethical you should not run on any major cloud (owned by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM), not run on anything on fossil fuels (few DCs), not use any API of major companies (google, apple, etc.) and so on. So basically if we ever want a new, better, solution (tech) we just need to materialize a few billions of dollars to allow this fully ethical solution with no dependency on immoral parties. Alternatively, the whole market dynamic should be disrupted, because that's the problem.
Are there federated search engines?
I thought there was but I think I was thinking of searx.
Whatever Brendan's personal views, he was a better CEO than Mozilla's current one... And I say that as a gay dude.
He absolutely wasn't a better CEO. He lasted 11 days and in that time did nothing other than kickstart an anti-firefox movement lmao
Still did less damage than Baker has managed to.
Yup, don't forget to distance yourselves from the other brands mentioned because of bad political and social views that are not conducive with today's social standards.
Further the cause ✊️