Turns out Kagi does do advertising

They promote their search engine but their users don’t get to see ads. I don’t know what’s wrong about that. Every company advertises with its products. I don’t see what’s reprehensible about that.

We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

They’re right, anonymity and privacy are two different things. Since you have to pay to use Kagi, you’re not anonymous. But they allegedly don’t know what you as the user search for when using their search engine. So they’re being honest here and how can honesty be bad here? Anyways, we’re on privacy@lemmy.ml, not anonymity@lemmy.ml or whatever.

“AI is mentioned zero times”

While I still give you this one, they’re technically correct. The word “AI” isn’t there but they mention AI features, haha. It’s a bit debatable since Vlad said “kagi.com” - which doesn’t mention AI or AI tools. Only when you go to the pricing page there are mentions of AI tools.

Blog post or article - whatever. The effect is the same: It’s on the internet, people read it and get influenced. Just because I picked the wrong word doesn’t kill my point. I’m sure you get what I meant.

Just try it. You can always cancel your subscription if you don’t like it (or just pay once without subscribing). I’ve been using it for half a year now and absolutely love it.

I get that but it’s a dick move by the author of that article to publicly speak bad about a product and then don’t even wanna listen to what that person who made that product has to say to defend it. Especially if there’s some false information that get’s spread by that article. I’m not saying anything written in that article is true or false - just explaining the situation from Vlad’s view.

They allegedly don’t know their user’s search queries. That’s how it’s allegedly private.

To me it’s understandable. Imagine you start a project like this that grows over the years and you even have some employees after a while. Now someone writes an article about your project with accusations that are wrong (at least in your mind). Wouldn’t you be pissed either? At least I can’t imagine anyone who could just ignore that.

They know the names of their customers but they don’t know their search queries. There’s the privacy. At least that’s what they said. Since Kagi isn’t Open Source it always comes down to trust.

Gotta wait till augmented reality becomes a common thing like smartphones so you can use an adblocker software to hide ads to your eyes in public, haha.

Not even gonna name the source where you got that from? :P

Either they’re okay with a switch and it’s easy or they are not open for that and it’s impossible to change their mind.

Pretty much nobody I know wants to switch to Signal or any other messaging app. So it’s SMS communication with them because I definitely won’t install WhatsApp.

But afaik it only works in the browser, not on mobile apps unless that changed in the last few months.

Imo only in terms of privacy. I tried it a few times over like two to three days but I always went back to Plex. Jellyfin is a nice piece of software though. I can imagine my switch will happen in a few years.

Yes, you can. You can block any domain you want to appear in your search results. Here’s the documentation for this feature.

Kagi is awesome! I recently fell in love with it.

Me too. I was so reluctant to pay for a search engine at first since there are good alternatives out there I don’t have to pay for. But I just at least wanted to try the first 100 free searches and was blown away by how great it is. It has some unique features like prioritizing or blocking specific domains, lenses and custom bangs. I payed the $10 the same day for Pro tier and 5 days later (yesterday) I even upgraded to Ultimate tier with ChatGPT-4 (called Kagi Assistant). I really, really enjoy Kagi so far. Most probably it’s gonna be my one and only search engine for the next years to come.

I have a Synology NAS so I use Hyper Backup and upload my backups in the Synology C2 Cloud. Of course all my files are encrypted first before they get uploaded.

Why would they want to stop? This is their fight against adblockers and on Chromium based browsers it’s an effective way so of course they keep pushing. ;)

Looks like my answer wasn’t saved, great…

Anyway, sorry for not reading all of that, but I’ll make it short and stop discussing because I feel like this is leading nowhere.

Unless you’re using hyperlocal and cover all TLDs and wanna browse the internet there’s technically no way around but to use an online DNS server. So coming back to the privacy aspect of this topic the question is: Which one do you trust?

tl;dr: Cut out Cloudfare’s recursive resolver (or anyone else’s) and run your own via PiHole and Unbound.

Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article. Let me point out the relevant part for you:
“A recursive resolver (also known as a DNS recursor) is the first stop in a DNS query. The recursive resolver acts as a middleman between a client and a DNS nameserver. After receiving a DNS query from a web client, a recursive resolver will either respond with cached data, or send a request to a root nameserver, […]”

See that last part with “or send a request to a root nameserver”? That is the DNS server on the internet your Unbound DNS server will ask if it doesn’t have the answer cached for you already.

Umm, Unbound is on your machine. So you’re saying you are your own middle man lol…

Exactly! Since the Unbound DNS server is your server you created your middle man server yourself. “middle man” has a very negative taste but in this case it really isn’t bad at all.

It asks the authoritative nameservers, which is who external DNS servers ask. By using Unbound, you are cutting out those external DNS servers, because you/Unbound is the DNS server. You are asking the authoritative name server directly instead of inserting someone else to ask on your behalf.

Okay, so you get it but you don’t get it fully. Again: Your Unbound DNS server can’t magically know which IPs are behind a domain name. So what does it do? It asks a DNS server on the internet because they know the answer. When you Unbound DNS server got the answer it then tells your computer.

Unbound (your machine) is asking the DNS nameserver.

YES! And where do you think is the DNS server Unbound asks if it doesn’t know the answer because it’s not cached yet? It’s some server on the internet.

You’re saying you are your own middleman lol.

I said you create your own middle man. Unbound is your middle man in this case because you make it look up the IPs behind the domains and it tells your computer these IPs then.

Instead of:
<Client> –> asks –> <DNS server on the internet> –> answers –> <Client>
You do:
<Client> –> asks –> <Unbound DNS (the middle man)> –> asks –> <DNS server on the internet> –> answers –> <Unbound DNS (the middle man)> –> answers –> <Client>
Let me say it again: Your Unbound DNS server being the middle man isn’t a bad thing so please don’t think “middle man” is always a negative term.

I’m saying cut out Cloudfare’s recursive resolver and run your own via PiHole and Unbound.

I just linked Cloudflare’s article about it because they explain it well. Doesn’t mean one must use Cloudflare’s DNS servers.

Did you read the article I linked?

Yes, I did. But I knew what a recursive resolver is before I checked the link because I’m a professional IT administrator and I know how DNS works. It’s part of my job.

You don’t cut the middle man, you create the middle man with Unbound. And Unbound needs to ask other DNS servers on the internet to resolve DNS queries. Your local DNS server can’t just magically know which IP is behind a domain like for example google.com. It needs to ask other DNS servers that know the answer. So unless you’re not using hyperlocal you will always need a DNS server on the internet to browse the web.

Here’s an explanation by Cloudflare.