Technology

The decision to fund Brave Corp, run by Brendan Eich, is my chief criticism of Kagi Corp.

I understood that.

Let me put a pin in this.

You mix this, to then say this:

The conversation that you said very few people participated in?

But you maybe misunderstood me (I will pretend it was not intentional). Not all the people who participated in that conversation are supporting the criticism you quote. And that is what I said:

First of all, the criticism is from a tiny fraction of the community

I did not say that very few people participated, which is anyway also true with respect to 19k users. However, this is without considering that it's very likely many more people read that conversation, even without commenting, let alone the fact that that's the result you find when you look for "kagi and brave", which means if you are learning about this topic, you will go read that thread and get familiar with these facts.

Which was never the argument presented.

This has nothing to do with a slippery slope. It's just applying the same principle which is a very common process to decide on moral/ethical stances. I think that Google is way worse than brave. The economical, social and environmental impact of Google is orders of magnitude bigger than the impact that Eich's donation to support homophobic position had on the world, or the one that Brave has with its crypto-bs. Mass-violation of privacy, layoffs, complete distortion of the internet based on the dominance, anti-competitive behavior, cooperation with US DoD and the military apparatus, the list is long. Given this, if your argument is that Kagi shouldn't use (i.e., fund) Brave, mine is that Google is worse than Brave, hence if we want to apply the principle "it should not fund companies with harmful practices", it should not fund it. And let's also add that it shouldn't fund Yandex, considering it's a Russian company which pay taxes in Russia (funding the invasion of Ukraine?) and who knows how manipulates the information for the benefit of government propaganda. So, there are good arguments to not fund any of these companies on the basis of the same moral claim. There are subsets of users which probably have different hierarchies of "who is worse", but for sure none of those companies will pass the bar to be considered "not harmful", so then you need to decide whether the benefits of not doing business with them improve the world or doesn't. From my PoV, as I explained, the benefits of having a company without harmful practices is bigger, even if in the short term means funding a little shitty companies. In fact, I also stated specifically that given Brave can be a replacement for Google, it is a net positive even without other considerations, and that's because I'd rather have money sent to Brave than to Google.

People even said Kagi should just keep it turned off by default so nobody funds Brave Corp except by choice.

I understand they are working on a feature to do that.

Very interesting, but most people just look at the homepage, maybe the About page.

That's for the most part written by the same guy anyway, it's a small company. Also, as I said before, if you are learning about the kagi/brave controversy, you will end up in the forum (which is public and linked everywhere), I would expect is the same if you want to know more about the company.

I used a quote from an actual nonprofit and attributed it to Kagi. Apparently, you didn’t notice, probably thanks to how similar Kagi’s language is.

What does it mean, lol. Language similarity doesn't mean they are pretending to be a noprofit. They have a mission to "humanize the web", and they tend to stress that they want to improve "internet" as a whole. How does this relate to hiding being a for-profit company/pretending to be nonprofit? The message if anything is that they want to reconcile the need to run a business with doing it in a way that empowers, and does not harm, the customers. Why would you read in bad faith an attempt to show that for-profit companies do not necessary have to violate user's rights to pursue profit?

As I said, I think you are simply attributing the meaning you want to sentences to make them mean what you want.

By charging a nominal fee for searches, Kagi ensures that its search results are faster, more accurate, and completely respectful of user's privacy. And by aligning our incentives with those of our users, Kagi is committed to building a better, more ethical future on the web.

All search engines have search costs, development costs, and administrative costs. Most search engines cover this by advertising, tracking, and selling your data. And for 25 years we did not have any choice. Kagi brings a new model to the market - pay for your search with your wallet instead.

Who on Earth would read this and think that it's a noprofit? It's a company that is trying to do (or says that it's trying to do) something in a more ethical way than what happens in the market.

By the way, they talk about humanizing the web and I think their effort in the context of the "small web" goes in this direction. Surfacing more content written by individuals I think is a good idea and makes the internet a tiny bit more human.

I appreciate how you completely ignored all other arguments that did not play well with your thesis, like the concrete example of how they passed the saving back to the users when they could, instead of sucking them dry like a regular for profit corporation would have done. I understand this conflicts with the picture you want to paint of a forprofit corporation being necessarily evil (statement with which I agree in a good 85% of the cases), but as I said, I think that so far they have a solid track record.

I also answered to your specific query about the Brave controversy, explaining my thought process and my reason. So if you disagree, I would like to know why you would be OK to fund Google but not Brave. Or Yandex. I am curious about which moral principles lead you to that conclusion. Since I have been kind enough to explain my position very clearly, and you ignored the whole thing, I'd like you to do the same, if possible.