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Kagi recently started using some services provided by Brave, a company run by immensely objectionable people. Kagi community members rightly raised concerns about this.

I was curious to see Kagi’s response. This is a tricky question that requires a thoughtful, careful response. Their response would be telling: not just about the question of Brave, but about their general ethical outlook.

2/

I’m sympathetic to Kagi’s dilemma. Brave may well provide useful services to them. And it is impossible to completely avoid engaging with people and companies who do harm in the world; that is our reality.

We can’t always disengage. What we •can• do, at a bare minimum, is think carefully about how we engage, and make wise decisions (as businesses and as individuals) that take into account our indirect impact on the world.

Again, these community concerns merit a thoughtful response.

3/

What I found was _not_ a thoughtful, careful response. What I found was the founder of Kagi saying:

“Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more.”

https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave/5

Well shit. That is the reddest of red flags.

4/

My dude, politics were deeply intertwined with tech long before I wrote my first line of code back in 1982. You don’t get to opt out. That choice isn’t even on the table. You interact with humans, you interact with politics.

Vlad’s post is a historically ignorant, pants-on-head-stupid answer to a serious question. When I read it, I hear, “We’re not ethically mature enough to think about our social responsibility, so we’ve given ourselves permission to take no responsibility at all.”

5/

I mean, at •best• that’s what I hear. At worst, I suspect that Kagi’s leadership is sympathetic to (or fully in bed with) the right-wing politics of Brave, and is using a claim of being apolitical as cover for their own politics. That would be par for the course when somebody gives this sort of “I’m staying out of politics” excuse for their politically charged actions.

6/

Which is it? Doesn’t matter.

When I give a company access to all of my searches, I’m giving them an •extraordinary• degree of trust. Earning that trust from me requires a keen ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility that never shrinks into the shadows and says “Not our problem! Not our responsibility!” when market forces raise ethical questions.

I want a company with a moral compass and a spine.

7/

I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.

Who is that company? Not Google. Not Microsoft.

I’d hoped it might be Kagi.

Nope.

8/

Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.

But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.

/end

@inthehands Thanks for the explanation. I was trialing Kagi, but not convinced of the balance between gains and extra effort. If now the gains vanish …