The topic is “using Yandex”.
No it was not. Read the post. The topic was obfuscation.
That obfuscation did come from an interlinked issue (Vladimir Prelovac getting caught paying Yandex for search data), but this year that concerned me was Kagi hiding this information from the community.
Do we not agree that being cagey about things and hiding once-public information is a red flag when it comes to privacy?
So what’s the issue? You don’t need Wayback machine to find their old page…
The issue is that the page is old and hidden! Normal people don’t hunt through repositories, let alone archives. It is extremely unreasonable to assume someone should do this.
Kagi Corp should provide this information transparently, not respond with mild hostility when that information is politely requested. In addition, they should keep it up to date! Acting cagey with users and hiding data isn’t how an honest corporation should behave!
If you think this is worthy of sharing, please, feel free to share it! Just mention me so I can take a look :)
Frustratingly, doing a search on that Changelog page for sources is mostly full of stuff not relevant to my search.
I did find a different post on Lemmy that talks about it, though. This post is incredibly thorough, and does an excellent job of undoing Kagi’s attempt to memory-hole the information about which sources they use.
This makes it all the more frustrating that Vlad refuses to re-add them, instead asking to know why we would care. Here’s a link to that conversation, which is on a platform controlled by Vlad, which appears to be resistant to archiving services that attempt to fetch those particular comments. Also for posterity:
slamor
Oct 27, 2024
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htmlThere is really no proper information about search sources. We need to know what resources are used and at what rate.
Please make a more detailed and clear edit.
Vlad
Oct 29, 2024
[@]slamor Is there any particular reason you are asking for this? More context will help us better understand the need.slamor
Nov 2, 2024
[@]Vlad why not?
Searching through kagi.com for “Yandex” yields a lot of dead links. The one living link is the Changelog, which says they added Yandex to their image search, back in December 2024… But that’s hardly a revelation. The changelog doesn’t go back very far either, AFAIK
As for the other links: Google says these links used to contain it the word, but I don’t know why. Maybe this one was for raised sites, maybe it was for lowered sites, which would at least give a little insight into whether users loved or hated the domain…
url: https://europe-west2.kagi.com/stats?sd=asc&st=percentage
text: yandex.com. zlibrary.to. androidcentral.com. answer-all.com. baijiahao.baidu.com. cbc.ca. developer.apple.com. eightify.app. github.getafreenode.com. gitmemory …
Another result seems to suggest Yandex Images served up a photo of Steve Jobs in a demo search, but that is no longer the case. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
url: https://kagi.com/images?q=steve+jobs
text: 564 x 318 yandex.ru. 20 Steve Jobs Quotes: Wisdom from the Apple Co-Founder 20 Steve Jobs Quotes: Wisdom from the Apple Co-Founder. 696 x 418 cioviews.com. 75 …
Kagi has been criticized for removing their list of partners - originally, they admitted to partnering with Yandex, but they recently hid that partnership after receiving backlash. I’m not sure if the changelog will reflect that information, but I am curious to check now.
Let’s agree to disagree, then. I also disagree on the framing: you call it inconvenient, I call it a clear step backwards in terms of transparency. We can even compromise: CEO Vladimir Prelovac can simply update the list when he finds time. (He can even take time off from his occasional searches for online critics!)
This is largely circular logic. “It’s irrelevant what Kagi is doing, as long as I can trust what Kagi is doing.” You should never trust an opaque company. A company that becomes more opaque upon scrutiny is not a trustworthy company.