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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-geopoliti

• lostlogin 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
      Putting what russia does in same sentence as what america does, shows that you are either intentionally trolling or severely handicaped.
      • Razengan 3mo ago
        Maybe I'm severely trolling the intentionally handicapped.
      • flumes_whims_ 3mo ago
        I'm sure Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, Palestinians, etc. agree that putting Russia in the same sentence as America is stupid.
        • Razengan 3mo ago
          Don't forget Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Laos and Cambodia
          • prmph 3mo ago
            Why Japan? What do they have to complain about?
            • addandsubtract 3mo ago
              Someone needs a history lesson...
              • prmph 3mo ago
                There is more to my comment than meets the eye. You should not assume ignorance on my part.
            • Razengan 3mo ago
              Guy...
              • prmph 3mo 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.
                • Razengan 3mo ago
                  By that logic, does the USA deserve to be nuked for what they did to native Americans, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and others?
                • NordStreamYacht 3mo ago
                  Unit 731's work was taken over by the US and perps were let off. By the US.
      • NordStreamYacht 3mo ago
        Yugoslavia.
  • dewey 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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.
      • 3mo ago
  • BloondAndDoom 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
  Regardless of whether I agree or not, that's rather level headed. I appreciate the transparent response.
• ninkendo 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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.