this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
510 points (100.0% liked)

Fediverse

35502 readers
131 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29244629

You can also search the Fediverse directly

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (7 children)

“Paid search engine” <— no thanks.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Suit yourself. They aren't perfect but I find value in them so far.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

This is how I discovered I search around 20 times a day. Burned through it pretty quick haha

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If you're not paying, you're the product.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not paying for my self hosted searxng and I have more control over my search than any kagi user.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well you are paying for the hosting you're just not paying for the service

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's very lightweight, any toaster could run a single user searxng instance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

if you are paying, you are still the product

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

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”.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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 😑

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
  1. Log into browser extension with kagi account

  2. generate tokens

  3. use said tokens

How does this ensure privacy? The tokens are associated to your account from the start.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

More like yes please, I get better results and better customization, and no ads or paid results.

It makes my life easier and speeds my workflows up. And unlike free alternatives I almost never find myself reverting to Google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If free alternatives make you Fever to Google, why not just use Google? It’s always free