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Kagi founder here. I notice you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions. A search engine's job is to deliver the best possible results. We evaluate API

• sophyphreak 1y ago
  I've subscribed to Kagi since 2023, and this response really gives me pause. Any support for totalitarian regimes like Russia or North Korea definitely forces me to reconsider being a customer.
• Crash0v3rid3 1y ago
  The "Google Alert" comment feels unnecessarily dismissive of a legitimate user concern. The core issue for many, myself included, is not about asking a search engine to make "geopolitical judgments" in its search rankings. Rather, it's a question of corporate ethics in selecting business partners. The decision of which companies to partner with and fund is inherently separate from the algorithm that ranks search results.
• Jonovono 1y ago
  Dang, this is a refreshing take. Going to take a look at Kagi.
• 7373737373 1y ago
  If you can't judge that funding war criminals is a wrong action, you should reconsider your ability to do so morally Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, startup founders aren't exactly known for putting anything else above money and their ideas, particularly actual human well-being. Consider that you, too, will have to live in the world that you help create, including the consequences of "a mere 2%"
  • mm263 1y ago
    Is Yandex directly complicit in war crimes?
    • 1shooner 1y ago
      I can't vouch for the source, but this provides a factual chronology of Yandex's (forced) integration into Russian state propaganda: https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/the-sad-fate-of-yandex-from-independent-tech-startup-to-kremlin-propaganda-tool https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...
      • mm263 1y ago
        Okay, propaganda, sure. Propaganda is a different argument - it compromises the quality of search - and I will happily agree with you. I want to emphasize, that the claim was: using Yandex through Kagi is supporting war criminals. Which war criminals? Which war crimes is Yandex complicit in? I plainly do not accept that propaganda === war crimes.
        • 1shooner 1y ago
          >I plainly do not accept that propaganda === war crimes I'd say propaganda is often necessary, and usually successful, at allowing governments to execute war crimes. I think most modern war crimes are lied out of existence by propaganda outlets like Yandex (or any number of US news outlets at other points in recent history).
    • throw123xz 1y ago
      Following that reasoning, is Gazprom invading a country? No? Then I guess we should buy their gas. Why not send the latest and greatest ASML lithography machine to Mikron? It's not like they're actually launching the missile using the processor they manufacture. And so on. You can see the problem with this...
      • lostlogin 1y ago
• gkoz 1y ago
  A leader who on principle legitimizes and pays companies that are literal tools of oppression will inevitably burn his customers. And isn't it funny how as a paying customer one still has as much say in this as with Google?
• eldaisfish 1y ago
  this is a terrible response. Where are your customers? Predominantly the West, likely the US? This is not a question of "geopolitical judgement" but rather of funding a regime that illegally invaded another country, one that is responsible for a lot of cyber crime, one that oppresses its own people and one that directly uses misinformation to sow chaos in other countries. Apply this same argument to North Korea or Iran. Assuming that either contributed meaningfully to the quality of your search results, would you be comfortable sending money to companies based in Iran or North Korea? You can hide behind your technocratic arguments for a while. Look to Google and Facebook to see where that ends.
  • vickychijwani 1y ago
    It’s ironic the way you put it - the US has also invaded many countries, is responsible for a lot of cyber crime, and uses misinformation to sow chaos in other countries [1]. Should we all stop “funding“ the US? Somehow Ukranian lives are precious, but Iraqi and Bangladeshi lives are not? I have no horse in this race - I’m neither American nor Russian, nor do I particularly love either country. But I am tired of US hypocrisy. I don’t understand how you all don’t see it - you’re all holed up in your cocoons and have no idea what’s actually going on in the world. [1]: https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/bangladesh-coup-seems-straight-out-of-cia-playbook-why-india-should-be-more-watchful-and-alert-13801515.html https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/bangladesh-coup-seems-stra...
    • eldaisfish 1y ago
      let's not pretend that US democracy, flaws included, is in any way comparable to Russia. Please, you know this is a bad faith argument, so let's cut the false equivalence. I dislike the US as much as anyone, but I appreciate that the US is much better than Russia.
      • adhamsalama 1y ago
        How many countries have Russia invaded in the last 50 years? And the same for the US? The US invaded more and killed more innocent civilians, so pretending it's any better than Russia is hypocrisy at best.
• throw123xz 1y ago
  I don't know if you should drop Yandex or if the alternatives are better or not, but I feel that you're missing the point here. You're looking at this purely from a technical point of view. That makes sense when trying to make the best search engine, I guess, but humans are not machines. You talk about geopolitics and search quality, when the guy you replied to is thinking about indirectly funding a machine that is bringing war to a country and killing people (I have friends that have been affected by it). Your profile says you're "humanizing the web". To do that, we can't ignore what humans are and how we work.
  • freediver 1y ago
    I understand your perspective and don't take these concerns lightly - I was a refugee of two wars myself, so I'm deeply aware of human suffering and its impact. Our mission to humanize the web means ensuring universal access to human knowledge, regardless of politics, delivered with clarity and protected with integrity - for everyone, regardless of their location or circumstances. A search engine that filters sources by political approval becomes something else entirely - it becomes a biased information provider that denies the very universal access we're fighting for. The most humane thing we can do is build tools that serve humans first by providing the best possible search results to everyone - before this conflict, after this conflict, and during all other 100+ armed conflicts taking place in the world today.
    • gkoz 1y ago
      An upstream search index is not exactly a source and boy is that one politically biased. Given Russia's efforts towards destruction of civic society everywhere and replacing it with post-truth one, you very much risk compromising integrity by touching their products.
    • throw123xz 1y ago
      That's a completely valid position to have. The thing to keep in mind is that for some people, and this includes some of your customers, there are things that are more important than your mission. Right now, some people avoid anything that is related to Israel. When the US invaded Iraq, some avoided US companies. I won't touch anything related to Musk after the two sieg heils and other things. The guy that complained clearly has an issue with what Russia is doing in Ukraine and doesn't want their money to end up in Russia. It's a free market. You should do what you think it's right and then people will do the same with your product. Some will care more about search quality and pay, while others will care about the companies you decide to work with and use something else.
• unfitted2545 1y ago
  Would it not be possible for the user to disallow certain sources for searching, so as to not pay them for the API call?
  • irsagent 1y ago
    I think is a more comfortable position to take.
  • fourg 1y ago
    funny enough I asked what this controversy was about to GPT 4.1 and it said Kagi now allows people to disable the Yandex source from their account settings. That's not true, unfortunately.
• GoatInGrey 1y ago
  I cancelled my kagi subscription upon seeing this response. I donate to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. I lost a family member to Russian artillery as well while providing medical aid to civilians. I very much do not want my dollars to fund the very thing that my donations are intended to defend against. I'm going to assume you run a similar policy with Chinese search providers. After seeing Chinese warships off the Taiwanese Coast running invasion exercises (a roughly $30 billion annual expenditure for them last I checked), I very much want to minimize my funding of them. I understand the argument you are making but war is far more serious than "politics".
  • i_love_retros 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • throw123xz 1y ago
      Perhaps they don't, but some do. And those who avoid Amazon or Google might be fine with using Russian companies. We don't have the mental bandwidth to support every good cause or the capacity to avoid every bad player. That doesn't mean that you have to be fine with and use products from every company/country.
      • jszymborski 1y ago
        Agreed. Just because acting ethically isn't always easy, doesn't mean you need to give up on every cause.
        • dcow 1y ago
          The point is not to not try and support causes you believe in, it’s about acting in an internally consistent way. If you don’t support war, then you cannot indirectly support anything that has any part in supporting any war anywhere. You can’t pick and choose which wars and products are convenient enough to stand against while funding Google’s amoral corporate, US tax paying, attention machine because you won’t use a product which almost certainly undoubtably has contributed to vastly less harm than Kagi has (assuming we take as granted the premise that purchasing products of a company that is headquartered in a country at war has any political or financial significance whatsoever so as to be culpable for causing harm in the first place). I mean you can, but the idea that you’re truly doing any good is entirely vapid. You’re just lying to yourself to feel good. I guess most people probably don’t care if someone lies to themself to feel good. But to go piss on some product because they don’t have quite the same moral alignment as you do is rather silly and it’s entirely fair to see people calling this immature behavior out.
• ApeWithCompiler 1y ago
  Based response, I support that view. Evaluating other responses, people complain over Yandex, but asking for the very same experience. Only different in the illusion filtering happens to their wishes.
• TNorthover 1y ago
  Disappointing response. Guess I'll continue to avoid Kagi.
• McDyver 1y ago
  > The moment politics influences search results is the moment we stop being a search engine. Everything is politics, whether you acknowledge it or not. And right now you are taking a political stance.
  • plqbfbv 1y ago
    > Everything is politics, whether you acknowledge it or not. And right now you are taking a political stance. No, not everything is politics. Kagi is a well-made tool, and part of the reason why it works so well is exactly because it tries not to be political. Thanks to the founder's reply, we know it ranks its sources based on utility to its users. Part of being a search engine is allowing the users to be exposed to all the information available on a given topic. The user decides how to use the tool. I am (as many europeans) against the war that Russia started against Ukraine, but that shouldn't prevent me from looking into what Russia is saying about it should I desire to do so, and having the Yandex integration means that I, the user, am in control whether I want to click on the Yandex result or not, but at least I'm aware it exists. If the platform would decide to shut out Yandex, it wouldn't make the problem disappear, it would just remove your awareness and knowledge of it.
    • lostlogin 1y ago
      One of the criticisms of Yandex is that it sanitises its results to align with Kremlin wishes. If accurate, how does that help you? For what it’s worth, I went to Yandex and tried searching Bucha, Navalny and a few other topics and the results seemed inline with Google, so I’m wondering about the accuracy of that claim (or is it a geographic thing?).
• mebizzle 1y ago
  Thank you for creating Kagi, sorry that you're dealing with misguided folks and thanks for the in-depth explanation.
• jszymborski 1y ago
  Would you ever consider switching out Yandex for something like the Brave Search API or Bing (if they aren't already part of the mix)? While I do understand your position, it's important to understand including Yandex in your index doesn't mean that politics aren't influencing your results; it's not an apolitical position.
  • dcow 1y ago
    By that definition precisely noting is apolitical. And that’s really the point, isn‘t it? Kagi values search quality over virtue signaling in line with whichever way the wind is blowing. Also, do Kagi’s Russian users deserve to be punished because of their leader’s actions? Is that virtuous?
    • jszymborski 1y ago
      > By that definition precisely noting is apolitical. I'm with you > Kagi values search quality over virtue signaling in line with whichever way the wind is blowing. Wait, when did I suggest that they adopt values based on "whichever way the wind is blowing"? I'm just asking them to not support the economy of a country whose invaded another free and democratic country for the purpose of expansion, and has engaged in war crimes to do so. People are upset about this, not because it is trendy, but because they think it is wrong.
      • dcow 1y ago
        You’re asking. There isn’t a moral truth here. It’s just politics. Prove to me that Kagi’s support of Yandex has uniquely enabled a Russian war crime and maybe we could start having a real discussion about whether Kagi is morally culpable. Prove that Kagi is committing more harm than my other options. Prove that Kagi is committing more harm than the good that quality search results provides the world, provides people who are fighting and speaking against the war. Otherwise yes this level of guilt by hand waving association based on making you feel good in the moment is exactly the definition of virtue signaling.
  • autumn-antlers 1y ago
• dcminter 1y ago
  This is the only issue preventing me from buying a subscription. Kagi looks great but this is a major stroke against it for most Europeans. Choosing to ignore the provenance of your suppliers is absolutely a political decision even if you wish it wasn't.
• rustcleaner 1y ago
  Your steadfastness against the politics of the "Modern Lens" astounds me. You are a refreshing drink of cold water on a hot Mojave summer day.
• lostlogin 1y ago
  Thanks for responding here. The issue generates strong responses on both sides. Is there any chance of adding an ‘exclude Yandex’ option to user accounts? No money to Yandex and no improved search results. I doubt my chances but miss my favourite search engine.
• jwr 1y ago
  > you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions I do — I disagree strongly with your choices, which is why I cancelled my subscription and why I bring this up. It's doubly sad, because I liked your service.