Comment by amelius
Comment by amelius 2 days ago
Comment by amelius 2 days ago
There are few other powerful countries, with countless Web services, who freely wages war(s) on other countries and support wars in many different ways. Is there a way to avoid their products?
Whataboutism doesn't get us anywhere — saying "but what about X" (insert anything for X here) usually results in doing nothing.
Some of us would rather take a stand, imperfect as it is, than just sit and do nothing. Especially in the very clear case of someone (Kagi) doing business with a country that invaded a neighboring country for no reason, and keeps killing people there.
Why this particular stand? Is doing nothing any better than taking what are essentially random stands? Obviously if you are Ukrainian this will be an important stand to you, but otherwise doing things based on a mix of what the media you like focuses on or whatever is not really very different from doing nothing.
I think "no wars of conquest" is a bright line that was crossed by Russia, that hasn't been crossed by other nations in a long time. And I think it's important for the whole world to take a stand on that, not just the nation that was invaded. It's not a "random stand."
Doing something is literally the opposite of doing nothing. This is complete gibberish.
> Why this particular stand?
First, any stand is better than whataboutism and just sitting there doing nothing.
Second, this stand results from my thoughts. It is my stand. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Third, in the history of the modern world there were very few black&white situations where there was one side which was clearly the aggressor. This is one of them.
I was very conscious of this comment being called out as a 'whatabout', it was still only thing I could think of and wrote it bit carefully.
My point was that we should either not take an issue with things like this and block everything in the whole country because their government is bad. Or we should do the same for other countries too.
Google is worse than Yandex, no? At this time, Russia is (debatably*) more evil than the USA, but that doesn't mean Yandex is more evil than Google. And I'm told Yandex has better search results.
* most of the evil stuff Russia's done, the USA's done way more of
Not only is "whataboutism" literally anti-communist jargon, you're using it wrong. It was meant to refer to when the US would criticize some aspect of the USSR and the USSR would point to the fact that the US was an apartheid state. The point was that the accusation that the US was making was entirely different from the observation that the USSR was making - it was simply a change of subject.
You can't call for a boycott on a cosmetics company that experiments on dogs if you are a rival cosmetics company that experiments on ten times as many dogs.
“whataboutism” is the reddit word for calling out hypocrisy
I find this amusing, because it seems like Kagi's target audience dislikes this (politically polarized), and I as someone who is not Kagi's target audience likes this (politically neutral).
There's a secret third dimension you can ascend to through a hole in the neutral middle where the forces of the other two axes cancel out. 'The Elites' doesn't want you to know this.
/hj?
Wait, what? Their choice is specifically a politically neutral one, wouldn't that mean their target audience is a politically neutral one? Why is your impression that Kagi's target audience is politically polarized users? Been a paying user of Kagi for years, never got that impression.
FWIW, I don't think Kagi should remove or avoid indexing content from countries that invade others, because a lot of the times websites in those countries have useful information on them. If Kagi were to enact such a block, it would mean it would no longer surface results from HN, reddit and a bunch of other communities, effectively making the search engine a lot less useful.
Why is supporting Yandex, who are involved in Russian politics and linked to the ruling regime, a neutral decision? That is very much a political decision, in the same way that working with US tech companies is a political decision. You need to decide what you're willing to tolerate and where your ethical lines are drawn; the alternative isn't neutrality, it's nihilism.
I don't like defending Russia which is a horrible country, but I find it hypocritical to only talk about their imperialism and pretend not to see that the most imperialist country in the world, the one that has started, financed, and participated in the most wars, is the United States, and yet the question of boycotting American companies is never brought up. Google has been intentionally sabotaged in terms of image search and reverse image search; Yandex is literally the best on the market, but Kagi should boycott them because their headquarters are in the wrong country?
Yandex has the best image search, and others are years behind it. Further more Nebius has sold all group’s businesses in Russia and certain international market. They are completely divested from Russia for a 1.5 years already: https://nebius.com/newsroom/ynv-announces-successful-complet...
The post you linked was posted when the divestment was already going underway, so it is at least dishonest if not malicious.
Yandex is the government approved search engine in Russia, which is impossible without the state exerting control over it. I wouldn't pay much attention to divestment, it's not how any of that works.
For instance here you can learn that Yandex NV is fully controlled by a group of Russian investors: https://www.rbc.ru/business/06/03/2024/65e7a0f29a7947609ea39...
The government's where the offices of a software company are physically located exert control over them. To follow this logic to its end and apply it even handedly results in nation based NIH syndrome surely?
You are talking about an entity whose ownership is 99.8% Russian nationals and state companies; whose employees for the most part are Russian nationals, whose main market is Russia and with very little tangible assets that can be arrested in the Netherlands. The only reason for this "divestment" is sanctions evasion.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349797 (11 months ago)
https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-1000-companies-have-cur...
You pays your money, you takes your choice.
I wouldn’t trust a divorce where one party still provides for the other.
At least in my area, there are legal avenues if alimony goes unpaid. Assets can be seized to pay off late payments and wages can be garnished.
Its a different story if the payer truly can't afford to pay the alimony, but at that point they wouldn't have the immense power you are concerned with.
You are mistaken to think that zealots can be reasoned with. They have been conditioned to react upon anything “Russia” like a Pavlovian cue, a command of the trained animal. They are a herd that moves as a herd, based on cues of lead animals. No amount of proof or evidence will ever dissuade them from a position that the herd is moving in. They cannot reason on their own and lack the courage to separate, let alone say something that the herd disapproves of, lest they be expelled from the herd and ganged up on.
Damn. I didn't know that.
Now we need a 2nd Kagi, so we can switch to that one instead. :(
I don't agree with this logic. It implies that people who use Google, Bing and a million other products made by US-based companies are supportive of the huge amount of attrocities commited or aided by the United States. Or other countries. It feels very odd to single out Russia's invasion of Ukraine but to minimize the Israeli genocide of palestinians in Gaza, the multiple unjust wars waged by the United States all over the world etc.
It's often fairly easy to find US government-centric news and criticism with Google.
But as one counterexample: The end of the US penny was formed and announced not with public legislative discourse, nor even with an executive order, but with a brief social media post by the president.
And I don't mean that it's atrocious or anything, but I wanted to see that social media post myself. Not a report about it, or someone's interpretation of it, but -- you know -- the actual utterance from the horse's mouth.
Which should be a simple matter. After all, it's the WWW.
And I've been Googling for as long as there has been a Google to Google with. I'd like to think that I am proficient at getting results from it.
But it was like pulling teeth to get Google to eventually, kicking and screaming, produce a link to the original message on Truth Social.
If that kind of active reluctance isn't censorship on Google's part, then what might it be described as instead?
And if they're seeking to keep me away from the root of this very minor issue, then what else might they also be working to keep me from?
I have yet to see any kind of censorship when querying Yandex, do you have any examples?
It doesn’t imply any of that at all.
There certainly is a huge army of people ready to spout this sort of nonsense in response to anyone talking about doing anything.
Hard to know what percentage of these folks are trying to assuage their own guilt and what percentage are state actors. Russia and Israel are very chronically online, and it behooves us internet citizens to keep that in mind.
Imo, Kagi is still the better option, because it isn't supporting the global surveillance mechanism we call advertising. All these people, missing the forest for the single yandex tree.
So if America invades Venezuela should we all stop using google? Should we have stopped using google when the U.S. invaded Iraq and killed 150,000 people[1]?
Should we stop using products imported from China for the cultural genocide they've perpetrated against the Uyghurs?[2]
Is Yandex Russia?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
You can take whatever stand you want. When there’s a country that killed, raped and tried to exterminate most of Eastern Europe we can choose to cut any and all ties with it and consider them for all intents and purposes ..terrorists.
I sort-of see where you're coming from, but it also ignores a double standard to me. Don't buy search from a company that uses an api from another company that is (or was? unclear) based in a country that invaded another country and completely upended the world order. For some people that's a line that they don't want to cross and I get it.
However if that's the case how can they continue buying Chinese products when China has done the same thing, but worse, and for longer, to their own population? Because it's less convenient to stop? _That_ to me lands squarely in the "take whatever stand you want" category with the addendum of, "and don't worry if it doesn't make sense."
Is it because it's within their own borders and therefore isn't our problem?
> However if that's the case how can they continue buying Chinese products ...
Why are you assuming they are?
Honest answers are yes, yes, and yes. It may be unavoidable for the average person to avoid imported goods from China, but we should remain aware of our place in the world and try where we can. If the US does invade Venezuela, I sincerely hope that individuals and business owners try to cut as many ties with complicit US tech companies as possible. Honestly, with this clusterfuck of war crimes going on over "drug boats," I hope they're already starting.
I'm surprised this is possible given the sanctions on Russia.
Why's that something to be aware of? Yandex is actually a good search engine, so I'm told, as long as you don't search for things related to Russian politics. Kagi presumably knows this and won't use their results related to Russian politics.
Feels more like a scare campaign to me - someone doesn't want you to use Kagi, and points to Yandex as a reason for that.
Meh. Most people, including myself, couldn't care less, and Yandex image search is very capable.
I remain amazed by the lack of attention given to this.
Regardless of one's position on the 'everything online is Russian propaganda, Russian bots or misinformation - invest in sickles and hammers, comrade / wtf just use basic common sense and the internet is as safe as it ever was' continuum, such universal enthusiasm for a Russian-owned, Russian-controlled search engine should generate a little more counter-argument, at the very least.
Absolutely no mention of Google, Bing, Startpage, DDG, or even Mojeek search engines usually pass online without somebody detailing the problems, flaws, or why they're not as good as the alternatives. Usually, at least 20% of the comments will be overtly critical, with at least 1 person passionately arguing that this search engine is going to destroy life as we know it / funds genocide / is an abomination unto God.
On open forums and spaces where a variety of users and tastes are represented, that minimum level of criticism usually applies to absolutely everything from movies to toothbrushing techniques to kids' TV to low-carb breakfasts. If more than 3 people care enough about something to discuss it, at least 1 of those people will hate it and feel the need to enunciate why.
Except Kagi. Kagi must enjoy the highest praise-criticism ratio of anything I've ever seen on the web, including concepts like sunshine and heaven and the eradication of polio.
Seriously. The only 'real' criticism I ever see of Kagi is like 'I personally don't like it because I don't think a search engine is worth more than $19.99' or 'unfortunately I need x feature', and it's always followed by a reply saying 'Ah, well Kagi is now available for $19.50' or 'you'll be thrilled to know that x feature can be enabled in Kagi by following these steps'.
And the occasional 'I don't use it because it seemed a bit wierd and wasn't worth it' comment languishing on the outskirts of the discussion.
So yeah. I do not expect this comment to stir much discussion, mainly because it's like 24 hours after the main debate and is on a pretty low-impact thread on hacker news from an uninspiring new ish account. But also because Kagi critical comments are written in sand, whatever the discussion or authority or audience.
That should make people more suspicious.
> But also because Kagi critical comments are written in sand, whatever the discussion or authority or audience.
Maybe people just turn up too late and their comments generally aren't seen?
I directly use Yandex sometimes, because there are huge blind spots for all the US-based engines I'm aware of, and it fills some of them in.
If someone can point me to a better index for that purpose, I'd love to avoid Yandex. Please inform me.