4 ms·

I am not supporting kagi since i found out they fund putin's war via yandex that is fully owned ditrctly by state

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
dewey 2mo ago
That's fair to make as a personal choice, but full context is also important: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
- lostlogin 2mo ago
  I really wish there was a way to support their amazing product without a cent going the way of the Russian government. I get that there is a stance being taken, and it's an attempt to be apolitical, but that's in itself a political choice.
  - Razengan 2mo ago
    I wish there was a way to use American products without a cent going to fund American wars, police militarization or global spying.
    - omnimus 2mo ago
      My thoughts exactly. And unfortunazely to be able even to access Kagi you gonna need to give US gov money in multiple places.
    - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
      Putting what russia does in same sentence as what america does, shows that you are either intentionally trolling or severely handicaped.
      - Razengan 2mo ago
        Maybe I'm severely trolling the intentionally handicapped.
      - flumes_whims_ 2mo ago
        I'm sure Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, Palestinians, etc. agree that putting Russia in the same sentence as America is stupid.
        Razengan 2mo ago
        Don't forget Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Laos and Cambodia
        prmph 2mo ago
        Why Japan? What do they have to complain about?
        addandsubtract 2mo ago
        Someone needs a history lesson...
        prmph 2mo ago
        There is more to my comment than meets the eye. You should not assume ignorance on my part.
        Razengan 2mo ago
        Guy...
        prmph 2mo ago
        Japan should be the last country with a complaint. Read up on unit 731, at least, if you are unaware of the rape of Nanking or it does not convince you.
  - dewey 2mo ago
    I feel it’s more a failure of regulation, it’s almost impossible to become a new search engine these days without using an existing index. There’s not many choices for that, Google won’t give you the data, Bing won’t so there’s basically only Yandex left. I’m sure if there was an open, comparable index they would happily just use that but if you want to change the landscape and slowly build up your own index you’ll have to make some pragmatic choices that might not be so black and white.
    - mghackerlady 2mo ago
      I mean, at this point Kagi could probably start their own, and there are plenty of smaller indexes (Mojeek, Yep, and Marginalia come to mind)
      - dewey 2mo ago
        Bigger search engines have a lot of custom integrations that are not just crawling the clear web. You have a lot of benefits from collecting data for a longer time in this market. I've often switched between Google and DDG but always came back to Google as in direct comparisons I was always not finding the right results in DDG. Kagi is the first time that I have not switched back a single time as nothing changed negatively in the quality and quantity of the results. It's a noble goal to have your own search index, but it's duplicating a lot of work that others with much more resources already do well.
        zargon 2mo ago
        In practice it is no longer actually possible to create a new search index with anywhere near the breadth of Google, regardless of the amount of resources you have available. Google (and to a lesser extant the couple of other historic engines) are entrenched enough to be allowed access by webmasters in robots.txt. And in the new era of mass abusive scraping by LLM companies, there's no longer the option to ignore robots.txt and scrape anyway, as sites do anything and everything they can to block any and all scrapers besides those already firmly entrenched.
      - 2mo ago
  - BloondAndDoom 2mo ago
    Assuming you are using American products, with the same logic how do you support that government? I’m honestly to curious, do you find that American government historians internal external politics is that much better than Russia? What’s going on with Israel and a massive track record of human rights violations including government funded torture oriented, democracy side stepping institutions like Guantanamo bay, and many more current and previous heinous acts.
    - matkoniecz 2mo ago
      1) Yes, Russia is in fact worse than USA. This does not change that USA did and is doing evil things. 2) At least in my case Russia is directly targeting my country, while USA does not (in general, far away empires are less dangerous than nearby ones) 3) In addition Russia is more resource constrained so getting the same amount of funds benefits them more 4) USA is also doing plenty of non-evil things while for Russia this activity are much much smaller part of their spending
      - Altern4tiveAcc 2mo ago
        > 1) Yes, Russia is in fact worse than USA. That really depends on where you live in the world. South Americans, Palestinians and Iranians would probably disagree with you.
        catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
        "South Americans" Nobody in my country considers going to Russia. They did in the 80's, but not since the 90's. People still go to cuba to study, but many abandon what they consider intolerable conditions, and all those I know didn't have any desire to stay after their plans. If you meant something else, excluding Venezuela, please tell me.
        matkoniecz 2mo ago
        Yes, in Russia you have less freedom, more corruption, lower quality of life, mor thuggery etc and so on. For who is greater enemy see my point (2) and I understand that for someone directly familiar with United Fruit Company type of adventures USA may be greater enemy despite being overall less evil.
- brikym 2mo ago
  That's a valid reason to use them and very pragmatic of Kagi. Sometimes jurisdiction A wants to hide something but it's on jurisdiction B's search results. If I were a Kagi subscriber I wouldn't want my search degraded because of a vocal minority.
  - Gareth321 2mo ago
    This is why I subscribe to Kagi. Google has been censoring topics for years, for many reasons. I have a few domains I use to test whether a search engine has been censored, and Kagi passes all of them. For example, many years ago, Google deleted the Proud Boys website from search. I believe they have deleted later iterations as well. No doubt there are millions of other website they've deleted, suppressed, or down-ranked. They're not transparent about this process or how the decisions are made. Of course I don't support or condone the Proud Boys. That is not the point. The point is that I should be allowed to search for information and make up my own mind. I wish it were not necessary to use search indexes from multiple countries I do not like, but the American government and American companies have decided they should be in charge of what users are allowed to see. I see no alternative.
- geraltofrivia 2mo ago
  Regardless of whether I agree or not, that's rather level headed. I appreciate the transparent response.
- ninkendo 2mo ago
  Framing Russia’s unprovoked invasion of their neighbor as “politics” actually makes me less trusting of Kagi than before I read your link. It’s really not a good look. Maybe english is not his first language, but at least in America we use the word “politics” to describe things like party association, arguing over wedge issues, treating elections as a “team sport”, rhetoric, etc. We don’t use it to describe an attempt by one nation to wipe out another one. I’ve been a Kagi user for several years now but, ugh, now I have to think about it a lot more and I’m probably not going to be as enthusiastic about recommending it.
  - mightyham 2mo ago
    Except it is literally is just rational geopolitics. The story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a single whimsical choice by a mad dictator. There has been a decades long encirclement campaign by NATO which ultimately pushed too far. That's not to say that states joining NATO did not do so willingly and of their own accord, but that it played into a larger struggle for influence that disadvantaged Russia on the world stage. The moral dimension is also completely illusory. Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition that's funding is due to the same cold-hearted power politics that Russia subscribes to. It greatly benefits the US and EU to keep Russia in an expensive, resource-intensive, prolonged military engagement. Put another way, the US is knowingly sacrificing Ukrainian lives and infrastructure because it gives us more power; however, at the end of the day we get to drape our actions in nice sounding rhetoric about supporting national independence even though that is merely accidental. Not to mention that the Ukrainian government has legitimately persecuted Russian-speaking minority populations in the country. Obviously, this has very little to do Russia's actual motivations for the war, but the point is the Russia's actions also have accidental good effects.
    - Lord-Jobo 2mo ago
      This is so hilariously stupid, the invasion of Ukraine is so completely impossible to defend that all of these talking points smell like a third grader wrote them. In a rush, at the beginning of class. “The moral dimension is illusory“ Yeah maybe if you glue your eyelids shut and pretend millions of dead people are actually totally fine, and definitely WORTH expending for… wait what is it that Russia has gained from this invasion? Disgusting effort, I hope you never have control over a single ounce of power.
ochronus 2mo ago
Huh? How so? Please add some sources
- lostlogin 2mo ago
  The link provided by dewey - a direct source. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
jorvi 2mo ago
Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch Source for Kagi switching to Nebius Group [1] from Yandex? (I care deeply about the war in Ukraine. But I'm still a happy Kagi user. I would like the option to exclude Yandex from my results. It reduces the effectiveness of the search engine. But that's a choice I'd prefer to be able to make myself. I'm not sure if that's realistic to offer to every user at scale, however.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group
- TiredOfLife 2mo ago
  "In July 2024, in a transaction brought about by international sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and restrictions on foreign ownership, Nebius Group, the Dutch holding company that owned Yandex, sold its Russian assets to a group of Russian investors for a discounted price of US$5.3 billion"
maccard 2mo ago
What browser or search engine do you use? I’m pretty sure I can find a reason to morally oppose it for you.
loehnsberg 2mo ago
Getting from using Yandex to funding Putin‘s war requires quite a few turns. Since most of Russia’s war chest is filled by money from oil exports and China indirectly also supports Russia materially, I would first cut myself off of all oil-based products, and then from the Chinese supply chain of goods, and only then cut products indluding Yandex search results. In that order, because that matters for the war chest. And after you then stopped typing the response, otherwise having to use a device that was made in China built from oil-based components using oil—based transport throughout its supply chain, send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team and anyone else who does not fund wars and still uses traded goods, because this is how the world is. If you want to throw a however tiny wrench into Putin‘s war efforts, complain load to your government to join sanctions and to have them support Ukraine and make your choice at the ballot box accordingly.
- matkoniecz 2mo ago
  > send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team why? Kagi is not entitled to be paid by them, and on free market they are free to not buy a commercial product and use alternatives and avoiding Kagi is trivial to achieve while avoiding products that were produced with oil in some way is impossible
  - loehnsberg 2mo ago
    Why? Because the claim is that they 'fund' the war by paying Yandex.
    - matkoniecz 2mo ago
      And it remains a true claim.
Matl 2mo ago
Fair choice but do you also boycott US companies assisting in the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked attack on Iran?
- cantalopes 2mo ago
  This is whataboutism in praxis
ilvez 2mo ago
This. Just cleaned up my t-shirt shelf and need to archive the nice yellow T-shirt they sent to early adopters. Not wearing it.. (Obviously it goes for the services as well). Not happy at all.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

dewey 2mo ago

That's fair to make as a personal choice, but full context is also important: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

lostlogin 2mo ago
I really wish there was a way to support their amazing product without a cent going the way of the Russian government. I get that there is a stance being taken, and it's an attempt to be apolitical, but that's in itself a political choice.
- Razengan 2mo ago
  I wish there was a way to use American products without a cent going to fund American wars, police militarization or global spying.
  - omnimus 2mo ago
    My thoughts exactly. And unfortunazely to be able even to access Kagi you gonna need to give US gov money in multiple places.
  - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
    Putting what russia does in same sentence as what america does, shows that you are either intentionally trolling or severely handicaped.
    - Razengan 2mo ago
      Maybe I'm severely trolling the intentionally handicapped.
    - flumes_whims_ 2mo ago
      I'm sure Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, Palestinians, etc. agree that putting Russia in the same sentence as America is stupid.
      - Razengan 2mo ago
        Don't forget Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Laos and Cambodia
        prmph 2mo ago
        Why Japan? What do they have to complain about?
        addandsubtract 2mo ago
        Someone needs a history lesson...
        prmph 2mo ago
        There is more to my comment than meets the eye. You should not assume ignorance on my part.
        Razengan 2mo ago
        Guy...
        prmph 2mo ago
        Japan should be the last country with a complaint. Read up on unit 731, at least, if you are unaware of the rape of Nanking or it does not convince you.
- dewey 2mo ago
  I feel it’s more a failure of regulation, it’s almost impossible to become a new search engine these days without using an existing index. There’s not many choices for that, Google won’t give you the data, Bing won’t so there’s basically only Yandex left. I’m sure if there was an open, comparable index they would happily just use that but if you want to change the landscape and slowly build up your own index you’ll have to make some pragmatic choices that might not be so black and white.
  - mghackerlady 2mo ago
    I mean, at this point Kagi could probably start their own, and there are plenty of smaller indexes (Mojeek, Yep, and Marginalia come to mind)
    - dewey 2mo ago
      Bigger search engines have a lot of custom integrations that are not just crawling the clear web. You have a lot of benefits from collecting data for a longer time in this market. I've often switched between Google and DDG but always came back to Google as in direct comparisons I was always not finding the right results in DDG. Kagi is the first time that I have not switched back a single time as nothing changed negatively in the quality and quantity of the results. It's a noble goal to have your own search index, but it's duplicating a lot of work that others with much more resources already do well.
      - zargon 2mo ago
        In practice it is no longer actually possible to create a new search index with anywhere near the breadth of Google, regardless of the amount of resources you have available. Google (and to a lesser extant the couple of other historic engines) are entrenched enough to be allowed access by webmasters in robots.txt. And in the new era of mass abusive scraping by LLM companies, there's no longer the option to ignore robots.txt and scrape anyway, as sites do anything and everything they can to block any and all scrapers besides those already firmly entrenched.
    - 2mo ago
- BloondAndDoom 2mo ago
  Assuming you are using American products, with the same logic how do you support that government? I’m honestly to curious, do you find that American government historians internal external politics is that much better than Russia? What’s going on with Israel and a massive track record of human rights violations including government funded torture oriented, democracy side stepping institutions like Guantanamo bay, and many more current and previous heinous acts.
  - matkoniecz 2mo ago
    1) Yes, Russia is in fact worse than USA. This does not change that USA did and is doing evil things. 2) At least in my case Russia is directly targeting my country, while USA does not (in general, far away empires are less dangerous than nearby ones) 3) In addition Russia is more resource constrained so getting the same amount of funds benefits them more 4) USA is also doing plenty of non-evil things while for Russia this activity are much much smaller part of their spending
    - Altern4tiveAcc 2mo ago
      > 1) Yes, Russia is in fact worse than USA. That really depends on where you live in the world. South Americans, Palestinians and Iranians would probably disagree with you.
      - catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
        "South Americans" Nobody in my country considers going to Russia. They did in the 80's, but not since the 90's. People still go to cuba to study, but many abandon what they consider intolerable conditions, and all those I know didn't have any desire to stay after their plans. If you meant something else, excluding Venezuela, please tell me.
      - matkoniecz 2mo ago
        Yes, in Russia you have less freedom, more corruption, lower quality of life, mor thuggery etc and so on. For who is greater enemy see my point (2) and I understand that for someone directly familiar with United Fruit Company type of adventures USA may be greater enemy despite being overall less evil.
brikym 2mo ago
That's a valid reason to use them and very pragmatic of Kagi. Sometimes jurisdiction A wants to hide something but it's on jurisdiction B's search results. If I were a Kagi subscriber I wouldn't want my search degraded because of a vocal minority.
- Gareth321 2mo ago
  This is why I subscribe to Kagi. Google has been censoring topics for years, for many reasons. I have a few domains I use to test whether a search engine has been censored, and Kagi passes all of them. For example, many years ago, Google deleted the Proud Boys website from search. I believe they have deleted later iterations as well. No doubt there are millions of other website they've deleted, suppressed, or down-ranked. They're not transparent about this process or how the decisions are made. Of course I don't support or condone the Proud Boys. That is not the point. The point is that I should be allowed to search for information and make up my own mind. I wish it were not necessary to use search indexes from multiple countries I do not like, but the American government and American companies have decided they should be in charge of what users are allowed to see. I see no alternative.
geraltofrivia 2mo ago
Regardless of whether I agree or not, that's rather level headed. I appreciate the transparent response.
ninkendo 2mo ago
Framing Russia’s unprovoked invasion of their neighbor as “politics” actually makes me less trusting of Kagi than before I read your link. It’s really not a good look. Maybe english is not his first language, but at least in America we use the word “politics” to describe things like party association, arguing over wedge issues, treating elections as a “team sport”, rhetoric, etc. We don’t use it to describe an attempt by one nation to wipe out another one. I’ve been a Kagi user for several years now but, ugh, now I have to think about it a lot more and I’m probably not going to be as enthusiastic about recommending it.
- mightyham 2mo ago
  Except it is literally is just rational geopolitics. The story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a single whimsical choice by a mad dictator. There has been a decades long encirclement campaign by NATO which ultimately pushed too far. That's not to say that states joining NATO did not do so willingly and of their own accord, but that it played into a larger struggle for influence that disadvantaged Russia on the world stage. The moral dimension is also completely illusory. Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition that's funding is due to the same cold-hearted power politics that Russia subscribes to. It greatly benefits the US and EU to keep Russia in an expensive, resource-intensive, prolonged military engagement. Put another way, the US is knowingly sacrificing Ukrainian lives and infrastructure because it gives us more power; however, at the end of the day we get to drape our actions in nice sounding rhetoric about supporting national independence even though that is merely accidental. Not to mention that the Ukrainian government has legitimately persecuted Russian-speaking minority populations in the country. Obviously, this has very little to do Russia's actual motivations for the war, but the point is the Russia's actions also have accidental good effects.
  - Lord-Jobo 2mo ago
    This is so hilariously stupid, the invasion of Ukraine is so completely impossible to defend that all of these talking points smell like a third grader wrote them. In a rush, at the beginning of class. “The moral dimension is illusory“ Yeah maybe if you glue your eyelids shut and pretend millions of dead people are actually totally fine, and definitely WORTH expending for… wait what is it that Russia has gained from this invasion? Disgusting effort, I hope you never have control over a single ounce of power.

ochronus 2mo ago

Huh? How so? Please add some sources

lostlogin 2mo ago
The link provided by dewey - a direct source. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

jorvi 2mo ago

Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch.

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
> Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch Source for Kagi switching to Nebius Group [1] from Yandex? (I care deeply about the war in Ukraine. But I'm still a happy Kagi user. I would like the option to exclude Yandex from my results. It reduces the effectiveness of the search engine. But that's a choice I'd prefer to be able to make myself. I'm not sure if that's realistic to offer to every user at scale, however.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group
TiredOfLife 2mo ago
"In July 2024, in a transaction brought about by international sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and restrictions on foreign ownership, Nebius Group, the Dutch holding company that owned Yandex, sold its Russian assets to a group of Russian investors for a discounted price of US$5.3 billion"

maccard 2mo ago

What browser or search engine do you use? I’m pretty sure I can find a reason to morally oppose it for you.

loehnsberg 2mo ago

Getting from using Yandex to funding Putin‘s war requires quite a few turns. Since most of Russia’s war chest is filled by money from oil exports and China indirectly also supports Russia materially, I would first cut myself off of all oil-based products, and then from the Chinese supply chain of goods, and only then cut products indluding Yandex search results. In that order, because that matters for the war chest. And after you then stopped typing the response, otherwise having to use a device that was made in China built from oil-based components using oil—based transport throughout its supply chain, send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team and anyone else who does not fund wars and still uses traded goods, because this is how the world is. If you want to throw a however tiny wrench into Putin‘s war efforts, complain load to your government to join sanctions and to have them support Ukraine and make your choice at the ballot box accordingly.

matkoniecz 2mo ago
> send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team why? Kagi is not entitled to be paid by them, and on free market they are free to not buy a commercial product and use alternatives and avoiding Kagi is trivial to achieve while avoiding products that were produced with oil in some way is impossible
- loehnsberg 2mo ago
  Why? Because the claim is that they 'fund' the war by paying Yandex.
  - matkoniecz 2mo ago
    And it remains a true claim.

Matl 2mo ago

Fair choice but do you also boycott US companies assisting in the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked attack on Iran?

cantalopes 2mo ago
This is whataboutism in praxis

ilvez 2mo ago

This. Just cleaned up my t-shirt shelf and need to archive the nice yellow T-shirt they sent to early adopters. Not wearing it.. (Obviously it goes for the services as well). Not happy at all.