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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

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If a search engine starts censoring by whatever means, I'll not be using it, neither free or paid no matter how good it is (and by definition it can't be). Shills can provide a list of countries they don't want to see, hopefully some crooked search engine will satisfy their desire for censorship.

No search engines are uncensored, not even Yandex. Partly because they have to exist in a country somewhere, and partly because really nobody wants to index CSAM.

Yes of course and if you think that's all that western search engines censor then you can keep using Google and Bing - but some of us actually do want the full picture.

Censorship of search results and deciding which companies to do business with are two completely separate topics.

In this case it isn't since there is no alternative that covers the censorship holes that Yandex does.

Then you have to stop using search engines.

Censorship? This isn't about free speech, there's a war on.

There's not just one war on, there are many. Should Kagi exclude all the results from American companies because of the actions of the US government in Iran?

Depends which side of the war you're on I guess? Or more to the point, whose money kagi wants to go after.

We are not talking about censoring anything here, just buying paid sources of index data.

I am unhappy with money flowing into Russia, for reasons that should be obvious (and I will not respond to whataboutism-style baiting here).

What other countries do you want nothing to do with?

North Korea, Eritrea, a few others but Russia is the only one in the list getting paid for search indexes.

This is so funny, as though wanting to boycott specific entities is some kind of absurd notion, and as though saying "Sure, what ELSE don't you like?" is some kind of proof that it's an absurdity

It kind of is though. Someone else will say "why are you sourcing results from an Israeli company?" and another will say "why are you sourcing results from a Chinese company?" and another one yet will say "why are you sourcing results from the US?".

Why are the ethics of working with Yandex or Baidu any better or worse than the ethics of working with Google or Microsoft? Except that they're not western.

The logical answer is that a person like this wants a very strong firewall, so ethically impure bits don't cross into their LAN.

> Why are the ethics of working with Yandex or Baidu any better or worse than the ethics of working with Google or Microsoft?

A completely reasonable question that you should be able to answer if you're giving your money out to them.

Maybe not that ridiculous, since one can guess that the underlying thoughts are more about geostrategic concerns than favorite color of the day.

The United States (I guess that's also the premise here, I'm not USA citizen myself) has notable rivalries with several countries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. These nations are often considered adversaries due to various geopolitical tensions and conflicts.

I guess that Kahi is doing nothing illegal, so if people have that kind of question, it feels legitimate to reply with a demand of what is the extend this patriotism stance is going beyond the judicial requirements.

> and Venezuela.

Isn't that one past tense now, after the US grabbed their leader?

Sure, rapture the leader with only a hundred civil left dead and this is it, everybody in the country now is hearth supporter of those who launched that raid.

The new Venezuela leadership seem to be ok with the US though?

Perhaps provide alternatives first if you want people to go along with your boycott.

Maybe just the ones at full or hybrid war with Europe?

yandex provides objectively better results for many things than google/ddg/bing

The results are kind of weird, but it does have one advantage: either nobody bothers to DMCA them, or they ignore it, or both.

I'm not sure about better but they do censor different topics and viewpoints which makes them an important source to aggregate.

Western companies also bought strategically important Nazi Germany industrial products in the 1930s because they were considered superior. Commercial convenience and technical quality are not moral or geopolitical absolution. Would you buy cheap quality gold if the Nazis were selling it knowing what it supports?

What about Israeli companies or American companies?

if someone sells me 1kg of gold for the price of 0.5kg, I will buy it

What's the point in stopping paying money to Russia if Kagi is incorporated in Palo Alto, so it's paying money and will continue to do so to a country causing no less troubles than Russia?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Much of the HN audience lives in the US, giving money to the US is unavoidable in life. But in return we do have the democratic ability to try to alter the behavior of the country.

It still makes sense to avoid giving money to other bad actors who are acting in direct opposition to your home country, and whom you have no control over, when you can.

Then one should ask for Kagi to move to a country that doesn't use taxes to invade other countries, and stop supporting them, instead of just asking to "stop paying money to Russia". Because fixing two wrongs is better than just fixing one, right? And I want to believe that living in the US doesn't make you agree with your country's foreign policy (which doesn't seem to change significantly even with your democratic ability to try to alter it) specially if you're worried about Russia.

Why that ability didn't result in less loss of lives in middle East for such a long time.

A lot more one could argue.

Ru-speaking audience is ~2 times bigger than Russia, why would they cut this? Only because of SJWs like you? I'd much prefer one search engine that searches well on two languages, instead of using different engines for each language. Ru-net has huge amount of usefulness in it, cutting it out is like cutting a finger. Fun fact, before the RU-UKR war, most Ukranians contributed to the Runet, so that would cut their heritage too.

Yandex isn't just a "Russian language search engine", it's a Russian company with quite close ties to the Kremlin. See: https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...

I'm frankly a bit surprised that it's even legal for a US company like Kagi to do business with Yandex, considering it's sanctioned: https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=18711. Though in fairness, I don't know enough about how exactly sanction laws work so it might be legally okay even if I find it morally questionable.

Yes, Yandex was effectively seized by Ru govt "friends" and turned into propaganda tool. And that's very unfortunate. But I'm not talking about getting the propaganda, only about search index. About money - don't think this income is even remotely comparable with oil/gas incomes, which EU passes to RU.

Please don't start political debate. I do not like censorship of any kind, hence my initial response. I want to have available information in full.

Please don't pretend I'm turning this into a "political debate". Your position is, "Kagi ought to keep doing business with Russia". That in itself is highly political. No side of this issue is apolitical.

My position was more about access to information, that business side for me is secondary, as unavoidable evil. If kagi will find a ru-index with decent quality, I'll be more than happier. Right now yandex has the best index, but given the decay of ru tech sector now, especially now when it's oligarch-managed, that might not be for long.

Yandex has quite a few international entities, which are probably not direct subsidiaries, which in turn probably helps with sanctions. Yandex Cloud seems to be sold by a UAE company internationally: https://yandex.cloud/en/about#impressum

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