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Comment by PokemonNoGo | Hacker News Reader

Do they still use Yandex?

>I’ve been a happy Kagi user since early 2023

I was an unhappy Kagi user when I learnt it relied on Russian back ends fueling a war. Now I'm not a user anymore.

Kagi is still partnered with Yandex[0], but they removed a list of sources they used. When asked if the list could be restored, Vladimir Prelovac replied "Is there any particular reason you are asking for this? More context will help us better understand the need."[1]

[0]: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

[1]: https://kagifeedback.org/d/252-show-source-of-results/49

Good links. Him making out that hiding it is to help users is a bit gross.

They would rather live in a world where they can find everything, including 2℅ atrocities they indirectly fund, than not

I prefer that world too.

The only people morally responsible for committing atrocities are those who commit them. Shall we hold the farmers who grow food that Russian leaders consume morally culpable for those leaders’ actions? I’m dead serious. You cannot in good faith actually argue that everyone is indirectly morally culpable for any action that is “enabled” by something they do.

Like freedom of expression, neutral objective search is too important to poison with identity politics and virtue signaling.

Not a great look. Even if you somehow believe partnering with Yandex is justifiable, you should stand by the decision.

My annual plan with Kagi renews in a few months and it might be time to look for alternatives.

They do stand by it: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

Removing a previously public list of sources after being pressed on their integration with Yandex gives me a different impression.

I’d assumed that stopping my subscription didn’t achieve anything.

Presumably enough have that it hurts a little.

Or they just don’t want to deal with the bad faith actors with overly amplified internet voices cherrypicking Kagi as the next innocent product to torpedo because they aren’t virtuous enough. You can’t win against crazy people in a mob.

That’s an interesting take.

Another view is that they are losing customers due to this, and have chosen to make the information harder to find.

For company that believes in accurate data above all else, its not a great look.

You're gonna have a hard time using anything right now if you want to avoid services run in a country not spending on a war somewhere.

It's not hypocritical to set the bar at a given place, like an ongoing war of territorial expansion and child abduction run by an autocrat that won't be replaced until his death. One with near complete popular support.

Are you talking about the United States? Like, yes, the Russian regime is awful, but how are you looking around at the the world and not applying the same standards to the US?

Can we just stop at the "yes the Russian regime (and oligarchy and substantial popular support) is awful" part? Because that is really all you need to reasonably boycott Yandex. Is it good to be ideologically consistent? Absolutely! Is it required? Not if you're aiming to reduce the amount of evil in the world.

Redirecting discussion about Russia's shittiness to a criticism of the US is a dumb propaganda tactic that a lot of people here are engaging in. And many others are swallowing. I'm happy to talk about the US or NATO or Israel, just not with the partisans who for some reason assume I fully support any of the above.

No, you can’t without being a hypocrite. It sure is convenient to take a moral stance when it has no real impact on your life and just throws others under the bus. But try applying your morality consistently and you will find it’s effectively impossible. So ultimately you’re just picking issues to complain about based on the current political climate, not actually taking a fundamental principled moral stance on an issue—you’re not making the world a better place.

Add to that the value that good search provides humanity, even Ukrainians and Russians against the war, and it’s not even obvious that boycotting a company that does a minuscule amount of business with a Russian company is doing more good than harm. So you’re arguably actually perpetuating harm more than reducing it.

> No, you can’t without being a hypocrite.

I literally said this. Please read.

> a company that does a minuscule amount of business with a Russian company

Should be easy to excise then.

Not if it provides value. And Kagi thinks it does.

Please demonstrate or reason that Kagi buying Yandex’s search index (1) does harm and (2) does more harm than good.

It contributes to the Russian economy and oligarchy, both are key drivers of the invasion. People like you love to say Ukraine won't win the war as if the end of the war is going to be on the battlefield.

The point is, if you boycott Yandex because of Russia, then in order to be morally consistent, you should also boycott Google and Bing. At that point, what search engines do you have left?

I was pretty explicit about saying that moral consistency is better but there is a valid position that is inconsistent but still aims to reduce human suffering.

And that handwaves the equivalence of the US and Russia as well as their relationships with corporations.

You are literally living through a fascist takeover of the United States, and said corporations are happily participating as long as they get a share of the pie.

I know that HN is an American website, and it is difficult for people in America to view the US negatively, but outside the US you will find a lot of people that don't really see much difference between Russia attacking Ukraine, and the US bombing the living fuck out of Afghanistan and Iraq, or the complete support that US (and its corporations!) have been providing to Israel in its genocide in Gaza.

It is okay to want to boycott one and not the other, but one cannot then turn around and scold others for not engaging in that boycott on a moral basis.

> is difficult for people in America to view the US negatively

You really gotta see past stereotypes and reductive takes. The absence of criticism of the US in a discussion about two different countries doesn't implicitly mean "Amurica o7".

> you will find a lot of people that don't really see much difference between Russia attacking Ukraine, and the US bombing the living fuck out of Afghanistan and Iraq...

Those people need to look a little deeper than "these are/were both voluntary wars". If someone is unwilling to engage beyond the shallowest possible academic level, it's not worth the effort.

> one cannot then turn around and scold others for not engaging in that boycott on a moral basis.

My intent was to defend the people engaging in the boycott. I don't recall scolding people for not participating but perhaps that was implied somewhere. Certainly I have not shied away from condemning Kagi/Yandex/Russia but it's not the same as saying "you should too". In fact, one of my main points has been that ideological inconsistency is okay of not great.

This could easily refer to any of the despots the US backs

Is that some sort of gotcha? By all means, boycott those countries as well. Support from the US certainly is not a free pass.

Follow the logic and boycott the US as well! Now you have zero viable search engines

I have plenty of reservations about the US, but the invasion of the Ukraine is not in the same category as anything the US is up to.

So sure, you are.

Could you give an example of US actions that are comparable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Support of Israel is as despicable (if not more so) as support of Russia.

Atomic bomb. Middle east. Vietnam.

Vietnam I agree with - but it would be weird to protest that now. The atomic bomb is more complicated and even weirder to protest now.

‘Middle East’ is a broad and also hard to compare. Lots of US policy I disagree with but is it like the Ukraine invasion?

Can you give me a line-by-line breakdown please? For example, I believe term limits are still a thing.

Thats not at all what he said.

All countries pay for their militaries. Russia invaded Ukraine and is actively comitting genocide.

There is a difference.

There have been times when I loved and times when I absolutely hated Yandex. That being said, I am not going to disown everything associated with Russia. Also they are distancing themselves. It's far from perfect but the more independent indexes the better even if you disagree with those particular indexes.

I wonder how much of the advantages from kagi are due to their yandex backend.

For example, I recently tried to search for a text string from ao3 and google, bing, brave, qwant, ... all return no results, while yandex and by extension kagi found it in the first search result.

Also, the company is based in a country that has 'fueled' more wars in my lifetime than any other country has in the last 100 years. Definitely avoid.

I doubted this but it's true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagi_(search_engine)

> Country of origin: USA

Do you have the same opinion on companies that are based in israel/give money to israeli companies?

That's one of the reasons I canceled my subscription as well.

Do you have any links / sources for this?

I think they are referring to this changelog item:

> Our image search became even better with the inclusion of two more sources: Yandex Image Search (widely recognized as one of best image search services) and Openverse (vast collection of openly licensed images). Kagi is doing the hard work so that you don't have to.

https://kagi.com/changelog#5340

They were asked to stop and refused:

https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

They have search results from Yandex among others, yes, and Yandex isn't really a Russian company anymore.

See for example https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...

> Yandex isn't really a Russian company anymore

The Dutch owners sold Yandex to a group of Russian investors.

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