this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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Are you referring to using Yandex?
I think they did explain that implementing turn off and on of specific engines per user is a complete rewrite of their querying system, so it is an expensive and complex change.
Removing yandex is OTOH not a great move as results in Russian language often come from there. Also morally I would generally agree, but then - especially now - you could argue about "giving money to US companies", and that means they need to shut down, they can't use bing, google, yandex.
They specifically avoid sanctions by routing payments through Kazakhstan, and tried to claim Yandex wasn't even a russian company when called out.
And no, the US is not the same. You might not have hosted Ukrainian refugees or be in full understanding of what's happening there but any money going into Russia is right now used for torture, rape and killing of Ukrainians.
I had a Kagi family subscription and immediately cancelled when I learnt about Vlad's "it's just some geopolitical opinions" stance. I also know others have done the same.
My wife is Ukrainian. I will leave it at that.
I have also a colleague from Afghanistan, for example, guess what their opinion is (and the list could be long, I just happen to have a colleague from there).
I remember Yandex being brought up during the Brave debacle, and I don't remember them claiming anything of the sort. I think they simply stated the position that choosing search providers based on moral claims would simply lead to them being able to use only the niche search providers.
I'm sure she would find equivocating the US with Russia very reasonable
She doesn't, but that's my whole point: it's a personal perspective. If you ask a person from Palestine, Vietnam, many places in South America, Yemen, Iraq, etc. their gripes would be different from my own, which as an Italian are different already from my wife's etc.
So which moral claims do you accommodate? The obvious answer is everyone's, by allowing each user to choose where indirectly give money. However this is apparently technically hard, so either you shut down or you simply decide that you can't accommodate any, and make good in other areas (I.e. through privacy-preserving services).
Russian money is directly killing people now, and if people use false equivalence like "everyone bad" then the war keeps going
Russia should be shut off from the Western world
So does US one in Palestine. So does UAE, and many more. It's not a matter of "everyone bad" is the fact that legitimately if the criteria is no paying anybody in a country that is involved in killing people, or that uses services from such a country, you reach everyone. And in this case it would be not using kagi directly as a US company.
The war in Ukraine is much closer to me, but if we are talking principles I need to understand that a person from Lebanon or Palestine, or other places might have different perspective and they would demand that "we don't do business to X" has a different "X". So to accommodate most or all of these perspectives, you need to necessarily include more countries, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not the only active war at the moment.
There are no US troops in Palestine
What about weapons? Money buy those too. Or that doesn't count for your moral principles?
US weapons are defending Ukraine as we speak.
So they cancel each other? Do you get a choice when you pay a US company to state that those taxes will need to go to Ukraine and not Israel?
Also there is a quantitative difference:
Can you please elaborate what causes for you to perceive these two facts as completely different?
Russians directly kill, rape, and torture Ukrainians. To compare this to a country that only sells weapons to Israel (and Ukraine too) is real dishonest.
It's a false equivalence
US gives (incl. donating) weapons to Israel with the precise purpose of those being used in the current massacres. Also let's not forget this is an absolutely momentary perspective. US was invading, torturing and bombing civilians until few years ago.
Now, I won't claim it is equivalent, because it's not and frankly doesn't matter: if your morals say that one is OK and the other is not then I will simply disagree with those morals.
To me a moral argument is based on principles: if I don't want my money to be spent on killing people, it doesn't matter much if the killing happens slightly indirectly. Solid principles don't hide behind thin layers of deniability.
So, I would expect someone with ironclad morals that want to avoid a small and indirect amount of money that to end up to Russia to also recognize that if the money go to the US government they have a pretty nice chance to also to result in people being killed (or right now to fund deportations etc.). However, I am interested in your perspective. You have stressed a lot on the two things not being equal, maybe you can explain how this difference changes everything for you, and makes one okay while the other unacceptable.
But the money going to the US also prevents Ukrainians being killed. Not to mention that wiping out Hamas and Hezbollah actually makes Israeli civilians safer.
In both cases, the US gives weapons to the country attacked by another party. In a more global context, Israel is fighting against Iranian proxies in the Middle East. Iran has been giving drones to Russia that kill Ukrainians.
So the US being involved indirectly in conflicts against the "Central Powers" of Russia, Iran and North Korea is actually a positive contribution.
Ufff that's a brave moral stance to have. You do you, I completely disagree with it though.
Thanks for elaborating anyway.
I hope you can at least see how a person from another country might have a similar perspective as you, but reversed, therefore demanding kagi (or other companies) not to give money to US. Not everyone will have this US-centric perspective.
I have a Ukraine-centric perspective, not US-centric
Fair enough, hopefully you can see how someone from - say - Lebanon would see it differently.
Lebanon was taken over by Hezbollah that was actually stronger than their nation's military
Iran's proxies did not have popular support everywhere
Sure bro, and if you are a lebanese civilian who sees bombs killing your family I am sure you think of all the good impact that those have and thank Israel and the US.
I will close it here, I have no intention to convince you and there is no chance that someone who supports Israel will convince me of any moral argument.
Vlad wrote it to me in their chat. Screenshot here: https://ioc.exchange/@troed/113311981054448887
Ask your wife whether she thinks people should send money to Russia. Now, Yandex is politically twisting the truth in their search results, but I care less about that than the fact that I'll happily send money to Ukraine but there's no way in hell I'm sending money to Russia.
Being a Kagi subscriber means you are. Morally - I'm not ok with it. In some nations it might even be against the law. Sanctions, you know. I'm not even sure Kagi is legally in the clear here.
I will give you more data points. I live in Estonia, and just now Estonia is disconnecting the power grid to Russia. It means that just by turning on my light, I might give (have given) some money to an actual Russian company. Let alone knowing which companies use Russian gas or other resources etc.
There are choices that personally make sense, I refused a job at a Yandex spinoff - israeli-russian company, for example. In this case the amount of money is so small, so indirect, that I personally accept the fact of giving money to Yandex - of which a small portion I assume ends in taxes and a portion of that ends up in weapons that will be used to kill Ukrainians is nothing different from buying a product that I am unaware was produced by a company which uses some Russian import. However, using kagi I can at least positively contribute to other aspects that for me are important in the world, like for example the protection of privacy. For this, I even accept to give money to Google and Microsoft, despite they are companies that made incalculable damages to society, and also pay (little) taxes and work directly with the US military, which means some money also ends up in weapons that are used to kill Palestinians (today).
Now, everyone has their own moral scale, so I completely understand if for someone this is unacceptable. That said, their technical reason why they don't have an easy way for people to choose search backend is reasonable, and if we go to the point where they shouldn't use X for moral reasons than they wouldn't be able to use yandex, bing, google, brave (and maybe something else). In fact, using Kagi itself means paying taxes in US.
So to me their current approach is the only reasonable outcome. If for someone the tiny amount of indirect money is worse than the benefit (not personal, but collective) of fostering a healthy tech company, boost privacy etc. then they can reasonably make the decision to not pay for the service. Painting not doing so as "supporting Russia" though is disingenuous IMHO (I am saying in general).
Funny note, my wife also uses and loves Kagi, and not because she doesn't care about the work or her family (who thankfully is in a safe-ish area).
Lots of western companies have divested from working with/in Russia even though it has cost them lots of money. Some because that's a legal requirement (sanctions), some because it's the right thing to do.
Not doing so is supporting Russia.
There are a ton of imports that are not (yet) sanctioned, and therefore tons of companies that did not divest.
As I mentioned, when possible or equivalent I absolutely support the choice. In this case, there are conflicting benefits and everyone can do their choices based on the way they value the different benefits.
This obviously can't be an absolute moral argument, otherwise residing in US or Russia (or UAE, or China and many many more countries) would be immoral ipso facto, and same for buying any product made by any company in those countries. The globalized world makes this basically impossible.
Anyway, I feel we are going in circles now, so I will close it here.