💴 Kagi’s refund has been issued. That was quick.

@prealpinux I loved it, it’s a really good search engine. But they recently partnered with Brave, a company whose CEO is known for his homophobia, and attacks on LGBTQ+ communities, so I gave it up, and asked for a refund.

More here.

@maique it sad that our world is going backwards

@Munish Very much so. Very sad, and very quickly.

@maique omg, I didn't know about Brave leader's position against LGBTQ+ community 😨. I'm immediately going to uninstall it!

@prealpinux Yeah. He’s gross on many levels. It’s getting harder to find a good company, with a good product, with good people running it.

@tomgauditiabois No idea yet 😔

@maique Good. I happened to have been on the monthly plan and my month was nearly up anyway. Just canceled, told them why, and walked away.

@maique wow, I feel glad I haven’t spent any money there. I search very little nowadays, so I never felt the need.

@jarrod Did the same. Difference was the length of the plan, I was on the yearly for a couple of month already. Money back, almost all of it.

@pcora I do a bit of searching, still. Now need to find a decent alternative.

@maique damn. 🥹

@maique neeva.com has been acquired and you.com seems to have become more an AI than a search engine 😖

@prealpinux Not an easy task! Even harder when you don’t have access to a decent search engine! 🥁

@maique I think there is no much space on the market for paid search engines. Most of people are not willing to pay for such services. People concerded about privacy prefer instead to use Startpage / Duckduckgo / Qwant & co....

@atog @maique @jarrod @prealpinux @Munish I read this earlier this week about Brave's Eich, spent some time reading the forum debate, and I'm undecided about what to do. Back in December, I subscribed to Kagi's one-year plan. Now what? I support the LGBTQ+ movement, I'm pro-choice regarding abortion rights, and I'm the first to vote with my wallet. But is Kagi's a first-degree approval of Eich's views? Do you think anyone working at Apple supports the LGBTQ+ movement? Do you think everyone at Apple are democrats? Certainly not. Certainly not. Conservatives, right-wing extremists, bigots, and anti-gay are creeping everywhere, sadly. I despise Trump and his supporters, yet I still buy Apple products. While I don't share the same views as Eich, I don't support the cancel culture either. I understand the urge to cancel a subscription but I'm not sure it's the best way in this specific case to send a message. I'm still on the fence on that one. I hope I don't offend anyone in this thread.

@prealpinux Thank you. I did try all of those before going with Kagi. DDG was the one I used the most, years with it.

@numericcitizen Not an easy one, no. I agree with everything you say, and this was not an easy decision for me. Took me a day, with the email as a draft, and even then I wondered if I should send it. I did, but I’m still feeling conflicted. The money is on the way back, and I’m still wondering if I did the right thing.

@numericcitizen there is nothing offensive in your thoughts! Each of us has it's own sensibility on such topics and your point of view is perfectly understandable. Not all the people working at these companies probably support such ideas and they've have families behind. So there is a sort of trade off to be paid in both cases like continuing the subscription or canceling it.

@maique since you are considering to use a VPS you can maybe think about hosting LibreY as your personal search engine: github.com/Ahwxorg/l...

@maique @prealpinux 🙏🏻

@prealpinux Thank you. Looking into it. But I would rather trust someone to do it.

@numericcitizen Part of the problem is that some products pose to have better ethics than those big companies. Doing that invites people looking closer and your morals and maybe being stricter.

Personally I'd be as fine with using Kagi ethics wise as I'd consider the collaboration be to distant enough for me to not care (it's one of many search sources), however I would consider it a negative. Not only because of ethics, but because I simply don't trust Brave as a company in general. (And I am trans and queer, and I actually do use some products where I'm not super happy about the people behind them… but it's a matter og degree I guess).

PS: The moral panic around ”cancel culture” is silly. People boycotting is as old as consumer products we're talking about boycotting, as is ”guilty by assosciation”. You can discuss whether it's good or bad, but please, let's stop pretending it's some new thing. It isn't.

Personally I think it's totally reasonable to have a line where you just don't want to use something anymore. For example, Twitter/X now basically openly allowing all kinds of bigotry to the extreme degree it's doing now made it an easy choice not to use that anymore. Or another example: when I discovered that the author of Ender's Game monetarily supports literal violent homophobia, I stopped reading (and certainly didn't watch the movie). That's not some sad victim of cancel culture, it's just a boycott.

@numericcitizen I don't think it's a straightforward decision either, and I wouldn't blame anyone coming to a different one. But I think it is one of the best ways to send a message. I don't like a change the company is making, so I'm taking my money elsewhere.

Certainly it would be impossible to use products from companies made of only people who support the things you support. For me, I think the difference is that Brave is led by Eich. He’s not a middle manager or rank-and-file engineer. He's CEO, and the buck stops with him. Kagi made the deal with Brave as a whole, sure, but also directly with Eich as CEO. I'm not saying they're the same, but it would be like Kagi partnering with a Trump business. Not everyone who works for Trump holds his views, but it sure would be notable.

My desire to support the LGBTQ+ community (who have told me that Brave's leadership is causing them harm), outweighs my desire for Kagi's better search results.

@maique Not to be argumentative, but DDG also has a direct deal with Brave. Is there a difference?

@gdp No, probably not. I used it before I was aware of the whole Brave thing.

@maique @munish In many cases, we’ve reached the point of having to choose the least-worst option instead of the best one. In a rampant and greedy capitalistic society, I fear this will only get worse. Cory Doctorow is somewhere shaking his head right now.

@torb Thanks for your clarification on moral panic over "cancel culture." I have tried explaining why I am against using that term (cc: @moonmehta), which has been generated via focus groups to fight culture wars and distract us. But your explanation is far more concise.

@pimoore @maique @Munish We have always chosen the least-worst option. Doesn't mean we can't work toward making it better but total purity is a myth. Heterogeneity is always better. We have to come to terms with it. It leads to a less stressful and more hopeful life.

@pratik @torb @numericcitizen @pimoore @maique @jasonekratz I agree that we as a civilization have always chosen least worst options across pretty much everything that affects us at scale. And Pratik pointing out issues with the term "cancel culture" is well taken too. However, I don’t think the behavior of boycotting things these days is the same as before.

The Web brought unprecedented near-instant connectivity, and algorithmic social media amplified that with unprecedented near-instant reach. That can drive good drastic changes, yes, but bad ones too and in either case often at the expense of nuance. For something that primarily taps into our emotions rather than intellect, one must wonder about its efficacy in dictating our transitions. Especially because time is the last thing that’s afforded in such cases. I recently wrote a bit more on this so won't go into it here again. While the particular entities and specifics of this thread are different, I think the linked point broadly still applies. What I truly don't understand is if correlation isn’t causation, why must passive association as an individual in a highly interconnected society equate to active support?