I cancelled my kagi subscription upon seeing this response.
I donate to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. I lost a family member to Russian artillery as well while providing medical aid to civilians. I very much do not want my dollars to fund the very thing that my donations are intended to defend against.
I'm going to assume you run a similar policy with Chinese search providers. After seeing Chinese warships off the Taiwanese Coast running invasion exercises (a roughly $30 billion annual expenditure for them last I checked), I very much want to minimize my funding of them.
I understand the argument you are making but war is far more serious than "politics".
I take it you don't use any phones, especially no apple products then, right? After all, apples gigantic sponsorship of the Chinese government is well covered at this point.
Clothing is also a no-no, right? After all, there is *literally no way to purchase clothing from any store that hasn't been produced - in part - by effective slave labor and Chinese machinery.
Really, consumer boycott of nations is infeasible in a global market. The only thing you're doing is virtue signalling.
This is a silly argument. Clothing is not optional; Kagi is. They are deciding to go without an optional good because they don't like what they spend their money on. I applaud them for it and I like Kagi.
You're asking a question they aren't. They take issue with the specific spending of money on Yandex. So the question is "which search engine isn't spending money on Yandex"
No, the initial comment did also reference China, which Google and Microsoft are also in bed with... albeit to a much less degree then Apple.
Hence he's on point, as ddg ultimately uses bing under the hood, pretty much all search engines would be out.
A plausible argument could be that you're only using it, not actively giving them money (at least for Google/MS). It'd still call that hypocrisy though, if someone made such an argument.
Conversely, Vlad’s strong sense of engaging in ethical business and utmost respect for and understanding of what it means to remain neutral is precisely why I use Kagi, and why I believe Kagi will beat Google in the long run—why I invested in Kagi.
There appears to be a conflict between ethics. Some won’t let a cent of their money go to Russia. Some will as they value their search engine and freedom of information.
You and Kagi have picked one over the other.
Perhaps they don't, but some do. And those who avoid Amazon or Google might be fine with using Russian companies.
We don't have the mental bandwidth to support every good cause or the capacity to avoid every bad player. That doesn't mean that you have to be fine with and use products from every company/country.
The point is not to not try and support causes you believe in, it’s about acting in an internally consistent way.
If you don’t support war, then you cannot indirectly support anything that has any part in supporting any war anywhere. You can’t pick and choose which wars and products are convenient enough to stand against while funding Google’s amoral corporate, US tax paying, attention machine because you won’t use a product which almost certainly undoubtably has contributed to vastly less harm than Kagi has (assuming we take as granted the premise that purchasing products of a company that is headquartered in a country at war has any political or financial significance whatsoever so as to be culpable for causing harm in the first place).
I mean you can, but the idea that you’re truly doing any good is entirely vapid. You’re just lying to yourself to feel good.
I guess most people probably don’t care if someone lies to themself to feel good. But to go piss on some product because they don’t have quite the same moral alignment as you do is rather silly and it’s entirely fair to see people calling this immature behavior out.
Wait, can't I just not support _this_ war? I don't think the invasion of a peaceful democratic country is OK, so that means it is morally inconsistent for me to believe it was right and just for the allies to go to war with the axis powers?
> You can’t pick and choose which wars and products are convenient enough to stand against while funding Google’s amoral corporate, US tax paying, attention machine because you won’t use a product which almost certainly undoubtably has contributed to vastly less harm than Kagi has.
What you're saying here is that, since it's hard to stand for the right things, you shouldn't try standing for anything. If only those without sin could do good, we really should just pack it in.
> But to go piss on some product because they don’t have quite the same moral alignment as you do is rather silly and it’s entirely fair to see people calling this immature behavior out.
Listen, there are some people who won't feel good about a product if they think it's going to make tomorrow worse. It's, shockingly, not about Kagi, or about you, but strictly about how some people wish to govern _themselves_. Kagi can make the decisions it wants, it's not a moral entity, it's a for-profit company which means its sole purpose is to seek profits. In fact, I'm not even trying to pick on Kagi here, generally speaking I think my values align with the product on offer.
The point stands though that corporations get to make decisions as to whether or not the ethical dilemmas they face are worth the customers (future and present) they'll lose over it.
> ...while funding Google’s amoral corporate, US tax paying, attention machine because you won’t use a product which almost certainly undoubtably has contributed to vastly less harm than Kagi has.
Why it's particularly relevant for Kagi to care about this sort of thing is that the users, like myself, who do not use Google and are willing to go through pains (be it worse results or monthly fees) to not fund them, are exactly the kind of person who won't use a service for not divesting from the Russian economy.
You are welcome to govern yourself however you want. I said that. But if you actually think that Kagi is going to make tomorrow worse then all I can say is, “good luck out there”.
I prefer to use my valuable time and limited attention supporting causes I care about in ways that actually matter and are consistent. I don’t need to “govern myself” to be happy. I don’t extend moral culpability for harmful actions beyond those who commit them. I don’t hold the inventor of the scientific method responsible for all the harm scientific discoveries have caused.
It's odd to put this as some kind of inconceivable checkmate. I have several family members that avoid Amazon, some strictly, some when possible, some when convenient. This thread is about Kagi, of course people boycott Google. 'Degoogling' has been in the zeitgeist for years.
I donate to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. I lost a family member to Russian artillery as well while providing medical aid to civilians. I very much do not want my dollars to fund the very thing that my donations are intended to defend against.
I'm going to assume you run a similar policy with Chinese search providers. After seeing Chinese warships off the Taiwanese Coast running invasion exercises (a roughly $30 billion annual expenditure for them last I checked), I very much want to minimize my funding of them.
I understand the argument you are making but war is far more serious than "politics".