Kagi search engine working with Russia
Swedish author and famous pro-Ukraine blogger Lars Wilderäng (Cornucopia) reports today that the Swedish security expert Karl Emil Nikka has revealed that Kagi is using the Kremlin propaganda tool Yandex as a backend for searches.
Wilderäng speculates this might mean search terms are leaking to Russia, while others worry about how Kremlin thus can get their talking points into western search results.
Security expert Karl Emil Nikka tells us that the search engine Kagi, popular among tech geeks, uses Russian Yandex, which was introduced after the full-scale invasion. This, of course, gives Russia the opportunity to look at what is searched for via Kagi.
Link (in Swedish), see 11:22 update: https://cornucopia.se/2024/10/uppdateras-ryssland-medger-bruk-av-c-stridsmedel-mot-ukraina-rysk-pilot-som-mordade-68-ukrainare-ihjalslagen-med-hammare-bland-de-allra-storsta-ryska-forlusterna-under-kriget-igar/
I expected something more shocking when I read "working with Russia".
Kagi uses multiple search backends, and of course it needs to forward search terms to these backends. These backends probably can't trace the searches back to the individual Kagi user though, but Yandex could still analyze search trends for example.
What's worse is that - unless they use Yandex' API for free - customers indirectly (and likely unknowingly) support a Russian company with their paid Kagi subscription.
Kagi should at the very least release a statement about this claim.
Same, but it's great for finding things US companies want taken down
probably because us government employees use its reverse image search for how good it is
Aside from reverse image search Yandex is wonderful for obscure things like software reverse engineering.
Do they? I remember seeing this in the past but can't find the information anymore. Now they only say "all major search providers" and that was part of the criticism in this "reveal". That they have become more opaque rather than being transparent about it.
This is all the official info I could find. Please share if anyone can find anything more. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html
You know what? DuckDuckGo uses Yahoo results, they must be working with the US government! What a nonesense.
Yandex is a really good search engine 🤷♂️
https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/the-sad-fate-of-yandex-from-independent-tech-startup-to-kremlin-propaganda-tool
Go search palestine or ukraine on google news and tell me if you see unbiased news 😉
Similar controversy when Kagi added Brave search.
oof
And I was just thinking about getting a subscription.
Time to selfhost SearXNG instead.
Can't you just not enable the Yandex backend if you're selfhosting searx?
Gotcha, that sounds like searx is a good option then. At first I thought you were giving a reason why searx isn't a suitable alternative as the gp comment is downvoted a bunch.
Note that Yandex has an aggressive captcha, so it doesn't really work with SearXNG in its current state. Tested a couple weeks ago.
Ugh politics again. I hope the admins take this down very soon.
I have to admit - coming from a lemmy.ml user, this made me chuckle.
Still not possible to transfer your account to other instances. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985
Lemmy.ml is known for terrible moderation but I chose it just because I was new and it was official. Now I'd probably choose something else.
It’s more about it being a Marxist Leninist instance lol
Mister/miss, I'm not even sure if Marxism is even allowed here. I think it's more about "we ban everyone who disagrees with our American political views".
Just what????
Well that's what I noticed in my experience. You can't argue with experience yk?
Ok. Pretend it's true and I'll pretend to believe it
Maybe .ml has good moderation and you're just insufferable.
They're known specifically for being pro-Russia, which is what made the comment amusing.
Then they have no benefit in keeping this post up and they definitely should take it down.
It's more about the fact that kagi pays yandex and yandex pays taxes to one of the craziest goverment in the world
Well Yandex isn't the best choice for anything obviously but (sorry for getting political again) imo US government is worse. And my comment wasn't about that even. The post doesn't have anything to do with privacy so it's offtopic and should be removed.
The thing is we don't know, we can't know and the article just link to a youtube video that I can't understand shit.
They don't need to share things with Yandex, if they share anything valuable with any other major search engine is already fucking bad.
That's another story then. The current post is nothing but hate and politics. The title is clickbait and misleading. It should've been written completely differently.
EDIT: well there's no point in arguing with those who think they can blindly use any means possible to hurt Russia and anything related (or not) to it. It makes sense though still a bit stupid.