6 ms·

I switched to Kagi[0] when DDG announced their implementation of selective censorship[1]. The results are much better, and I use the !g bang way less often (for

by valvar 4y ago

I switched to Kagi[0] when DDG announced their implementation of selective censorship[1]. The results are much better, and I use the !g bang way less often (for DDG I was basically always using it, making the bangs the only actually useful feature of DDG for me). [0] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ [1] https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 — I think it's sad that I have to clarify that I am personally also sickened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but that I don't want DDG to be an arbiter of truth despite that

10729287 4y ago
I'm also very happy with Kagi, and i'm a french user. Very, very impressive.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Did you have to wait long for the invite?
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Was around a week for me.
endemic 4y ago
What makes you trust Kagi more than DDG? Is their crawling/ranking algo open source?
- valvar 4y ago
  No, I only have their word to go on, but at least they explicitly say that they are avoiding censorship[0], while DDG are quite open with it. I also did some smell tests by searching controversial topics, and Kagi does seem to present a more mixed bag of sources than DDG and Google on the first page of results. [0] https://kagi.com/faq#censoring https://kagi.com/faq#censoring
  - anglerfife 4y ago
    How is a mixed bag of sources a good thing? A collection of reputable sources would be better. There's no such thing as neutral however breitbart and fox news (both of whom I've seen come up in searching) actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right downranking them is a political statement despite the list of lies they've spread. Theres no winning as half the people want to be lied to and it has so obviously been weaponized.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      > actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right If you think disinformation comes from one side you have been brainwashed good
      - numeri 4y ago
        If you think the distribution of disinformation is uniform across both sides, you've also been brainwashed good. There is plenty of peer-reviewed research on this, but here are two that I found after brief searching: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left... https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
        ekianjo 4y ago
        Love the strawman. I reply to your claim that its binary by saying its obviously not and you shift goalposts by talking distributions which was never the point.
paldepind2 4y ago
Calling what DDG did "selective censorship" is a very unfair description. Essentially a search engine is about sorting search results and any search engine must do that based on some idea about what information is good and what is bad. DDG has been doing that since day one. In fact, the primary reason DDG was created was because its creator thought they could improve search results by getting rid of things that showed up in Google that they thought where bad (the privacy selling point came later)[1]. You may disagree with some of these choices (which is fair) but calling them "censorship" is just using bad sounding words that don't really apply. 1: Source, Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  Folks throw that word around so much that it's become neutral. The people that use DDG overwhelmingly are not using it as a search engine to find Russian disinformation. This is literally a case of a business announcing that it's working to do its stated business activity, which is to provide relevant search results.
- ColinHayhurst 4y ago
  What he actually said: "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." You may note what Microsoft had stated earlier [0] "We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages." [0] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
  - laszlojamf 4y ago
    I'm just waiting for the day my flashlight starts deciding what to shine a light on based on my perceived intentions
    - rapind 4y ago
      I guess that will be the day that you buy a flashlight intended to rank and only light up the top 10 / 20 most relevant things? It's like complaining about water making you wet.
sofixa 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  >And who do you want to be an arbiter of truth? Each individual for themselves? That's fair and noble, but IMHO naive I know who wants to be the arbiters of truth, and I know who I don't want to be the arbiters of truth
- freeflight 4y ago
  > RT wouldn't have had an English version website and YouTube channel The same applies to the American equivalents of these outlets [0], which are not just far more numerous, but have always made a point of broadcasting in non-English languages, as not doing so used to be literally illegal [1]. > If an enemy ( yes, Russia is an enemy to world peace and humanity, no, the regular Russian isn't) Russia can be an enemy to the US, but declaring something or somebody an "enemy of world peace and humanity" is not only quite sensationalist, but conveniently fits the narrative the American equivalents of RT have been globally blasting out for many decades. > The paradox of tolerance is at work - allowing Russian state sponsored propaganda, and even worse, Russian state sponsored parties ( RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vuzrajdane in Bulgaria) in democratic countries, they will exploit that to sow division and destroy democracies from within, same as the Nazis did. What foreign sponsors did the Nazis have? In the case of the German AfD most of the actual know-how, enabling their populist rise, is actually based on American platforms and talent [2]. A lot of their finances are similarly questionable as NPD finances have been, as in; Having an oddly common proximity with the German BND [3]. Yet any kind of nationalist political extremism in Europe must somehow be the fault of Russia, just like US presidents getting elected was the fault of Russia, all very convenient narrative wise, just not very realistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [3] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinanzierung-grossspende-von-mutmasslichem-ex-waffenhaendler-aus-bangkok-a-1248416.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinan...
grapeskin 4y ago
People complain about search engines being full of garbage and clearly false info, then complain that DDG took action against sources that publish false info. Can’t win.
leadingthenet 4y ago
Another vote for Kagi! Every time I tried to switch to DDG I ended up reverting to using the !g bang on every other query. While Kagi supports the same functionality, I haven’t felt the need to use it once in the past two months that I’ve been trialing the private beta. It’s genuinely better than Google for me, which I never thought would happen.
acatton 4y ago
Even though Kagi looks and sound nice, I can't cope with signed-in-required search. I understand that their business model is "you pay, you are our user, we won't sell your data"[1] But there is a simple privacy-friendly business model to be made with free anonymous search engine as well, when you look for "horses" we show you ads of horses. This is what Duckduckgo Search and Google Search both do. (Well google then runs ads on many website which are then linked to your search query, that's the real issue) Now with Kagi, I have a company which knows all my darkest secrets whether I use a different computer behind a VPN or not. [1] https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  True, there should be an anony way to prove that you've paid. That would solve the issue.
  - dmacvicar 4y ago
    Mullvad VPN does this when you pay with cash.
Shadonototra 4y ago
kagi is just like duckduckgo under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links remember everyone, duckduckgo refused every independent audits, proprietary stuff like kagi is no exception, history repeats itself also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website they are done with DDG, they shifted focus to kagi instead? suspicious, it's not even out yet, only work on macOS, and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US, sure :thinking_face:
- asddubs 4y ago
  yeah, I've kind of felt since DDG first showed up, it's weird that people just take it at face value. IMO, privacy first === open source, everything else is smoke and mirrors.
- freediver 4y ago
  You got literally everything wrong about Kagi. Kagi founder here. Responding as I will not stay silent to public defamation. I'd politely ask you not to do what you did here (drop a ton of accusations without a shred of evidence) again. > kagi is just like duckduckgo There is almost nothing similar between Kagi and DuckDuckGo, starting with the fact that DuckDuckGo is a global brand that has ~100M users and sells ads to make money, where we have few thousand and are 100% user supported with a subscription business model. > under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links We literally don't. Kagi is not only zero telemetry but we do not log or associate searches with an account. The reason is we both don't want and don't need to. Our business is selling subscriptions not user data. > also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website Perhaps people simply genuinly love the product? > only work on macOS I think you refer to our Orion browser, which does work on Apple devices only for now. One needs to start somewhere. Kagi search works in any browser on any OS. > and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US I literally have no idea what you tried to imply here. You can find my email in bio and reach out if you need any additional clarification, I am happy to provide it.
Copenjin 4y ago
That's exactly the kind of "censorship" you want. I understand the sentiment, but you couldn't have chosen a worst example, I hope it's not this specific instance of censorship that really troubles you. Removing what is objectively, yes, spam is ok.
yegg 4y ago
Hi, CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo here. I see a lot of confusion here too, we are not ranking based on my politics (or anyone's politics for that matter). We actually do not intentionally censor any news results, meaning media outlets are not being removed or their stories displayed so far down in the results they are effectively removed. That is, unless legally prohibited, you should find all media outlets in our results, and they should generally show on top if you search for them by name or domain name. If you are seeing otherwise, please let me know and we will investigate. A search engine's primary job is to rank results, trying to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. We do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner. Ranking for news-related searches is particularly difficult because for most news stories there are often hundreds of media outlets covering the same story, many with similar relevancy in terms of keyword matching and popularity. As such, we look to another ranking factor to ensure just the top of the results aren't taken by obviously very low-quality news results so that users have more sources of relevant, high-quality news results to compare and choose between. The non-partisan factor we've found to help accomplish this is a rare, but well-documented history of a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site. And since we do not censor sites, even state-sponsored media in countries with very limited press freedom, these sites will still show up in results, and even on top like when you search for them directly.
- 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 4y ago
  Seriously, try kagi. Its better.
  - Zhyl 4y ago
    Are you suggesting to the CEO and founder of DDG to try Kagi?
- icc97 4y ago
  I love what you're been fighting for and it's great that you're on here. I'd even accept you accepting MS tracking cookies if you're transparent about it - you have to make money and I'd rather you stay in business. But I can't see anything from this post or the answers you gave to the metro specifically refuting this [1]: "The new @DuckDuckGo browsers for iOS/Android don't block Microsoft data flows, for LinkedIn or Bing" [1]: https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072
dkobia 4y ago
Another vote for Kagi here. What a breath of fresh air. I didn’t think they could pull it off but it seems they have.
stefanve 4y ago
it's not perse about truth but it is about facts, I personally don't have a problem with downgrading lies or denies of facts. In the end of the day a algo is ranking pages, algo's can be manipulated or gamed and they are not only by lot's of marketeers but also by government agents. While I don't believe a company should decide if an opinion about gun controle should be rankt or not. but if someone is claiming that these are just crisis actors and nothing happend I don't see a problem to block it. After all we are used to blocking spam these things are spam. I don't see a reason to treat this as any different just because they are selling political lies instate of product lies (and a lot of times these people are selling products in the end) these kind of lies are eroding democracy and should be treaded the same way as some one yelling fire in a cinema

by valvar 4y ago

10729287 4y ago

I'm also very happy with Kagi, and i'm a french user. Very, very impressive.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Did you have to wait long for the invite?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Was around a week for me.

endemic 4y ago

What makes you trust Kagi more than DDG? Is their crawling/ranking algo open source?

valvar 4y ago
No, I only have their word to go on, but at least they explicitly say that they are avoiding censorship[0], while DDG are quite open with it. I also did some smell tests by searching controversial topics, and Kagi does seem to present a more mixed bag of sources than DDG and Google on the first page of results. [0] https://kagi.com/faq#censoring https://kagi.com/faq#censoring
- anglerfife 4y ago
  How is a mixed bag of sources a good thing? A collection of reputable sources would be better. There's no such thing as neutral however breitbart and fox news (both of whom I've seen come up in searching) actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right downranking them is a political statement despite the list of lies they've spread. Theres no winning as half the people want to be lied to and it has so obviously been weaponized.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right If you think disinformation comes from one side you have been brainwashed good
    - numeri 4y ago
      If you think the distribution of disinformation is uniform across both sides, you've also been brainwashed good. There is plenty of peer-reviewed research on this, but here are two that I found after brief searching: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left... https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        Love the strawman. I reply to your claim that its binary by saying its obviously not and you shift goalposts by talking distributions which was never the point.

paldepind2 4y ago

Calling what DDG did "selective censorship" is a very unfair description. Essentially a search engine is about sorting search results and any search engine must do that based on some idea about what information is good and what is bad. DDG has been doing that since day one. In fact, the primary reason DDG was created was because its creator thought they could improve search results by getting rid of things that showed up in Google that they thought where bad (the privacy selling point came later)[1]. You may disagree with some of these choices (which is fair) but calling them "censorship" is just using bad sounding words that don't really apply. 1: Source, Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction.

bachmeier 4y ago
Folks throw that word around so much that it's become neutral. The people that use DDG overwhelmingly are not using it as a search engine to find Russian disinformation. This is literally a case of a business announcing that it's working to do its stated business activity, which is to provide relevant search results.
ColinHayhurst 4y ago
What he actually said: "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." You may note what Microsoft had stated earlier [0] "We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages." [0] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
- laszlojamf 4y ago
  I'm just waiting for the day my flashlight starts deciding what to shine a light on based on my perceived intentions
  - rapind 4y ago
    I guess that will be the day that you buy a flashlight intended to rank and only light up the top 10 / 20 most relevant things? It's like complaining about water making you wet.

sofixa 4y ago

[flagged]

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
>And who do you want to be an arbiter of truth? Each individual for themselves? That's fair and noble, but IMHO naive I know who wants to be the arbiters of truth, and I know who I don't want to be the arbiters of truth
freeflight 4y ago
> RT wouldn't have had an English version website and YouTube channel The same applies to the American equivalents of these outlets [0], which are not just far more numerous, but have always made a point of broadcasting in non-English languages, as not doing so used to be literally illegal [1]. > If an enemy ( yes, Russia is an enemy to world peace and humanity, no, the regular Russian isn't) Russia can be an enemy to the US, but declaring something or somebody an "enemy of world peace and humanity" is not only quite sensationalist, but conveniently fits the narrative the American equivalents of RT have been globally blasting out for many decades. > The paradox of tolerance is at work - allowing Russian state sponsored propaganda, and even worse, Russian state sponsored parties ( RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vuzrajdane in Bulgaria) in democratic countries, they will exploit that to sow division and destroy democracies from within, same as the Nazis did. What foreign sponsors did the Nazis have? In the case of the German AfD most of the actual know-how, enabling their populist rise, is actually based on American platforms and talent [2]. A lot of their finances are similarly questionable as NPD finances have been, as in; Having an oddly common proximity with the German BND [3]. Yet any kind of nationalist political extremism in Europe must somehow be the fault of Russia, just like US presidents getting elected was the fault of Russia, all very convenient narrative wise, just not very realistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [3] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinanzierung-grossspende-von-mutmasslichem-ex-waffenhaendler-aus-bangkok-a-1248416.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinan...

grapeskin 4y ago

People complain about search engines being full of garbage and clearly false info, then complain that DDG took action against sources that publish false info. Can’t win.

leadingthenet 4y ago

Another vote for Kagi! Every time I tried to switch to DDG I ended up reverting to using the !g bang on every other query. While Kagi supports the same functionality, I haven’t felt the need to use it once in the past two months that I’ve been trialing the private beta. It’s genuinely better than Google for me, which I never thought would happen.

acatton 4y ago

Even though Kagi looks and sound nice, I can't cope with signed-in-required search. I understand that their business model is "you pay, you are our user, we won't sell your data"[1] But there is a simple privacy-friendly business model to be made with free anonymous search engine as well, when you look for "horses" we show you ads of horses. This is what Duckduckgo Search and Google Search both do. (Well google then runs ads on many website which are then linked to your search query, that's the real issue) Now with Kagi, I have a company which knows all my darkest secrets whether I use a different computer behind a VPN or not. [1] https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy

GekkePrutser 4y ago
True, there should be an anony way to prove that you've paid. That would solve the issue.
- dmacvicar 4y ago
  Mullvad VPN does this when you pay with cash.

Shadonototra 4y ago

kagi is just like duckduckgo under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links remember everyone, duckduckgo refused every independent audits, proprietary stuff like kagi is no exception, history repeats itself also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website they are done with DDG, they shifted focus to kagi instead? suspicious, it's not even out yet, only work on macOS, and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US, sure :thinking_face:

asddubs 4y ago
yeah, I've kind of felt since DDG first showed up, it's weird that people just take it at face value. IMO, privacy first === open source, everything else is smoke and mirrors.
freediver 4y ago
You got literally everything wrong about Kagi. Kagi founder here. Responding as I will not stay silent to public defamation. I'd politely ask you not to do what you did here (drop a ton of accusations without a shred of evidence) again. > kagi is just like duckduckgo There is almost nothing similar between Kagi and DuckDuckGo, starting with the fact that DuckDuckGo is a global brand that has ~100M users and sells ads to make money, where we have few thousand and are 100% user supported with a subscription business model. > under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links We literally don't. Kagi is not only zero telemetry but we do not log or associate searches with an account. The reason is we both don't want and don't need to. Our business is selling subscriptions not user data. > also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website Perhaps people simply genuinly love the product? > only work on macOS I think you refer to our Orion browser, which does work on Apple devices only for now. One needs to start somewhere. Kagi search works in any browser on any OS. > and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US I literally have no idea what you tried to imply here. You can find my email in bio and reach out if you need any additional clarification, I am happy to provide it.

Copenjin 4y ago

That's exactly the kind of "censorship" you want. I understand the sentiment, but you couldn't have chosen a worst example, I hope it's not this specific instance of censorship that really troubles you. Removing what is objectively, yes, spam is ok.

yegg 4y ago

Hi, CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo here. I see a lot of confusion here too, we are not ranking based on my politics (or anyone's politics for that matter). We actually do not intentionally censor any news results, meaning media outlets are not being removed or their stories displayed so far down in the results they are effectively removed. That is, unless legally prohibited, you should find all media outlets in our results, and they should generally show on top if you search for them by name or domain name. If you are seeing otherwise, please let me know and we will investigate. A search engine's primary job is to rank results, trying to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. We do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner. Ranking for news-related searches is particularly difficult because for most news stories there are often hundreds of media outlets covering the same story, many with similar relevancy in terms of keyword matching and popularity. As such, we look to another ranking factor to ensure just the top of the results aren't taken by obviously very low-quality news results so that users have more sources of relevant, high-quality news results to compare and choose between. The non-partisan factor we've found to help accomplish this is a rare, but well-documented history of a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site. And since we do not censor sites, even state-sponsored media in countries with very limited press freedom, these sites will still show up in results, and even on top like when you search for them directly.

9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 4y ago
Seriously, try kagi. Its better.
- Zhyl 4y ago
  Are you suggesting to the CEO and founder of DDG to try Kagi?
icc97 4y ago
I love what you're been fighting for and it's great that you're on here. I'd even accept you accepting MS tracking cookies if you're transparent about it - you have to make money and I'd rather you stay in business. But I can't see anything from this post or the answers you gave to the metro specifically refuting this [1]: "The new @DuckDuckGo browsers for iOS/Android don't block Microsoft data flows, for LinkedIn or Bing" [1]: https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072

dkobia 4y ago

Another vote for Kagi here. What a breath of fresh air. I didn’t think they could pull it off but it seems they have.

stefanve 4y ago

it's not perse about truth but it is about facts, I personally don't have a problem with downgrading lies or denies of facts. In the end of the day a algo is ranking pages, algo's can be manipulated or gamed and they are not only by lot's of marketeers but also by government agents. While I don't believe a company should decide if an opinion about gun controle should be rankt or not. but if someone is claiming that these are just crisis actors and nothing happend I don't see a problem to block it. After all we are used to blocking spam these things are spam. I don't see a reason to treat this as any different just because they are selling political lies instate of product lies (and a lot of times these people are selling products in the end) these kind of lies are eroding democracy and should be treaded the same way as some one yelling fire in a cinema