- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
While they’re a very, very, very, very small search engine, it looks like someone requested a Lemmy search lens and was finally implemented today.
Been a Kagi user for a while - so happy they added this lens. Such a fantastic search engine. I’m really happy they - for some odd reason - see my demographic (as a Lemmy user) valuable.
I noticed it yesterday by chance!
Kagi is a really good product that I am very happy to support.
Cool! How does it work?
On the main Kagi search page, under the dropdown for Lenses click “Fediverse Forum Search” or something.
It’s OK so far. It only indexes communities on the largest Lemmy instances (I wasn’t able to find communities hosted on my tiny instance) but it’s a start!
Cool, that makes sense. I dont think there’s a way to search all of any federated system.
I wonder if searching for more content from a particular smaller instance makes it more likely to show up
I’m guessing they might just limit it to a hand-picked list of big instances for now.
In theory someone could get close to indexing all of a federated system by writing software that speaks activitypub, subscribe to a bunch of communities, and wait for the instances hosting those communities to push you new posts/comments, then use the domains of users in each new post/comment to add more instances to scan.
Would content from a smaller community not in the lens but federated with some instance which is on the Kagi lens show up in the results?
just tested it and yeah, it seems to work
Not very well! But things can improve, and I appreciate the gesture.
Some interesting details about Kagi: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707573907442638
tl;dr might not be such a good idea to use.
This is yet another case of the Fediverse blowing something out of proportions. This shouldn’t surprise anyone using Kagi if they were paying attention to the sources they were using to begin with.
That said, I still use Kagi and this doesn’t impact my view of them in the slightest.
Yes, Eich is a very toxic character who should be avoided for his anti-LGBTQ views, but Brave is far from the most controversial data source they could be utilizing.
Yandex has (had?) a known CSAM issue.
Yelp manipulates businesses about their reviews, which can help kill off small businesses.
Mapbox was engaging in union-busting tactics.
Google continues entrenching themselves in a lot of ways that violate privacy and doing who-knows-what with our information.
Choosing to use APIs from Brave seems so inconsequential by comparison.
You completely missed the main point: if the Kagi response would have been what you wrote I would agree, but they replied with something much worse, and that’s solely on them.
Did you actually read their response? It wasn’t bad at all. As a customer, this is a mountain out of a molehill.
What’s he to stay? Promise to vigorously look at the ethics of every executive at every data source going forward? That’s a losing proposition. At least the person isn’t bullshitting around pretending to cater to politics then lie about it.
I can’t think of any data source that would be 100.0% pure, especially once you add in the executives.
The Fediverse is, yet again, being unreasonable here.
I landed on it being a red flag, but nothing so bad that I’ll stop supporting them for now. But given that it’s a paid service, part of what I am paying for is for them to provide a better and more ethical alternative to known free engines. In turn, this means that I hold them to very high standards.
I’m guessing after the backlash over this they will be even more careful going forwards. It’s impossible not to make mistakes now and then, and though I agree with @poVoq that Kagi’s response here reflected that they had not thought certain issues through enough, I choose to be patient with them for now. At least they are making an effort to communicate rather than just giving empty corporate responses that mean nothing.
What are you using instead?
Self-hosting or using a public instance?
If self-hosted, which engines do you have set?
The start of the fediverse being the “front-end of the internet”, a new era is being born lemmings 🫡🫡🫡