this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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To answer your questions in order:
A subscription-based model might be the only viable one, since ads will inevitably lead to a conflict of interest and voluntary donations are mostly a no-go. The problem is that people are so used to the notion that everything is "free" that many are convinced that online services should always be free and balk at the idea of paying for anything.
Personally I pay for Kagi which has been decent enough
I mean, a search engine is literally the last thing on the internet I'd pay a subscription for. In a world where literally everything else nickels-and-dimes us for subscription service, search engines, torrent trackers, game modders who paywall their mods, and other kitschy non-essentials are literally the first things to get shuffled off the monthly budget.
If we weren't in such a deep recession that I pay as much a week for my gas as I do my groceries, with rent and ACTUAL bills eating the majority of what's left, I'd feel a bit differently; but if wishes were horses, we'd all ride. I literally had to start growing my own green rather than buying it, the economy's so shit.
A huge part of that is that most people don't consider privacy concerns to be a cost. All they factor into their evaluation is whether it costs them actual money.
Whats "decent enough" mean? I've been curious and you're the only person I've known who pays for it.
I pay for it, the results are quality and the fact that my brain doesnt have to sift through ad results and can just look at the real data is so nice. Additionally, they have a large number of "lenses" which can change the scope of your search. For example, they have a lens for searching lemmy as well as lenses for the "small web", which filters out all the results from massive corporate websites and gives way more personal project sites and the like.
All in all I'm a fan.
I personally like a lot the gazillion bangs also available, the personal up/downranking/blocking of websites and their quick answer is often fairly good (I mostly use it for documentation lookup). The lenses are definitely the best feature though, especially coupled with bangs. I converted even my wife who really loves it.
Seconded this. Been paying for a long time now, no regrets.
I never thought id pay for Kagi and that paying for a search engine was ridiculous. Then I kept seeing loudly positive feedback from reputable people in my circle and tried the trial.
I pay for it and never have the "I only ever use !g on duckduckgo" problem.
Sorting by web pages with least ad trackers is a cheat code to find old style websites with people sharing knowledge for knowledge's sake rather than profit.
Just my two cents, but I keep trying it out and I have not seen anything good enough to warrant paying for it. And I am not against paying for privacy, I pay Proton.
You could let people host their own as a method of scaling. But that limits it to geeks like us.
Use kubernetes and let it scale and pay for hosting on cdns.