I find it kind of hilarious that a paid search engine is highlighting paid articles to help their users avoid them.
i'd love some service where i can put in $20 a month, and it gets split up among the sites i've visited, with options to give bigger shares or exclude sites completely. probably not gonna happen for a while though, having to set up something to receive payments with is just too much trouble for the small personal blogs etc. that have the most interesting content.
The interface could be so simple: a button in your browser you click to donate to the current open tab. That button turns into a pay button if you've opened a page that demands payment. And the page could specify how much it costs.
To a user willing to pay Kagi for a better search experience that may well be seen as a mark that those articles are more likely to be worth reading.
Or draw attention to content that may be better?