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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29244629
You can also search the Fediverse directly
I love Kagi and gladly pay for it. Nice devs too.
Using Kagi genuinely makes me happier, if only because I don’t have to look at a ton of garbage before I find what I need. It’s pleasant to use.
good stuff! this is the exposure we need
Does anyone still think their data isn't being sold even if they pay for a service? Plus now it's associated to your payment information. These are the same guys that spent all their runway funding on Tshirts, I don't think they're the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Baseless.
Does anyone still think their data isn’t being sold even if they pay for a service?
Very possible they're too small to have a meaningful contingent of buyers. But I wouldn't bank on it.
Apparently we're in the minority. Everyone here is sure it's all aboveboard and shipshape.
You can use privacy pass and pay in crypto
I'm not fathoming what Privacy Pass gains you, it's tokens generated from your account, the chain of possession is obvious throughout. The tokens get used up and removed from your account and the logged-in browser extension generates more, but there's no "privacy" involved there.
Fair enough on the crypto.
The tokens can't be traced to the account and are batch generated so you can't be deanonymized by correlation. They aren't stored in the account, but locally, in fact Kagi can (and they say they will) just sell the tokens directly, as they aren't linked at all to an account
You obviously didn’t read how privacy pass works
I use Yandex a lot now for not censoring me. Maybe I'll have to try this.
It is funny to see people relentlessness stanning a paid service that's built on a notoriously fraud prone crypto stack, then getting paranoid about something about as sophisticated as Lexus Nexus because it's hosted out of Evil Country.
I hope nobody here bothers to interogate where their torrents are being hosted from too closely.
I'm not a spy or part of the government, but Yandex is Russian... I tried them like 10 years ago, but I wouldn't take my chances with them.
Its a search engine, what are they going to do, give some guys search history to Putin?
I generally use it for finding streaming sites.
Yandex has plenty of services just like Google. They have an email service, cloud storage, etc.
I'll only switch to yandex if it's obvious that Google (via startpage) is censoring my results. Or if I'm looking for a torrent or something.
Ya that is the bulk of my use, streaming sites and such.
W
I've used them about a year and glad to see this kind of improvement. They are not perfect but still much better than the free options so far.
Only concern I've had has been around the AI stuff they are providing... So far it's optional and a separate piece from the normal search. Time will tell there I suppose.
At the very least their AI Integration Philosophy has a good and nuanced view on the topic. So as long as they actually stick to that those ideas when integrating features it should be fine.
Kagi is goshin' awesome.
“Paid search engine” <— no thanks.
There is a free trial and there was 1 month for free 2 months ago. You can try it and see if you think its worth the price
I tried it and i personally believe its not worth the price, but testing it is better than just refusing the concept from the start
I love to mock people who use the library by shouting "If you're not the payer then you're the product!"
Westerners are so baby-brained on this shit. Kagi can take your money and still spy on you. Yandex can not take your money and still not bother caching your search history, because there's no good way for them to monetize it. Nevermind GitHub or Wikipedia or literally any other public good being hosted on any website anywhere.
The delusion that you're safe using a free service is matched only by the delusion that you're protected because you paid someone money.
Fine for you. I’m just glad there’s an option besides “sell your soul” and “invest hundreds of hours and dollars into self-hosting”.
Suit yourself. They aren't perfect but I find value in them so far.
freemium pls :cry:
although good freemium examples like proton mail for example seem too good to be true with free vpn and all the jazz. always such a shady feeling when using such services
They have a trial for 100 searches iirc. And they also occasionally share referral links to subscribers that are 3 month premium subs to share with friends so they can try
This is how I discovered I search around 20 times a day. Burned through it pretty quick haha
If you're not paying, you're the product.
I'm not paying for my self hosted searxng and I have more control over my search than any kagi user.
Well you are paying for the hosting you're just not paying for the service
It's very lightweight, any toaster could run a single user searxng instance.
If you’d like to give away any free toasters with hackable embedded microcontrollers to prove your point here, I’m a willing recipient and will attempt setup of a searx instance.
if you are paying, you are still the product
Upvoted.
I have a counterpoint to those claiming that paid are better. By using a privacy oriented search engine, then they don't know exactly who you are. In theory just your IP. Maybe fingerprinting.
When paying they know exactly who you are. You have to trust them.
So in one case you can protect yourself, in the other you have to trust them.
Also, Kagi also uses the Russian index Yandex 😑
Interesting, thanks for sharing
-
Log into browser extension with kagi account
-
generate tokens
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use said tokens
How does this ensure privacy? The tokens are associated to your account from the start.
There’s a link in the second paragraph to the technical details, including source code for the implementation and documentation for the required infrastructure.
But the tl;dr is that the tokens aren’t associated to your account. Unless you were able to snoop on the original request that generated the tokens (in which case, you’ve got bigger issues!), there’s no way to prove that a token is related to a specific account. A token only proves that an authorization server once granted access to some account.
Edit: Wikipedia has a good intro:
Non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic primitives, where information between a prover and a verifier can be authenticated by the prover, without revealing any of the specific information beyond the validity of the statement itself.
Edit 2: You should not be catching downvotes. You had a reasonable question.
There’s a link in the second paragraph to the technical details
I'm reminded of this mindset from the crypto scam surge.
Points at technical documents
"Well, it says it's secure so quit arguing that it's not secure"
Typically followed by
"If someone traced you/robbed you, then you were just doing it wrong"
Like, we've got high level white house officials feeding national security secrets to the Israelis because they just blindly implemented a "secure" Signal extension. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised people don't look past the cover.
But come on. "You can just buy some tokens and then you're secure" is painfully naive.
I’m out here trying to answer reasonable questions techie folks might have about the most promising possibility I’ve seen so far for getting our normie families off of Google.
What are you here for? Calling people naive pseudo-scammers? Get out of here.
this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
491 points (100.0% liked)
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