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lori

As many of you know, I posted recently about my experiences and outlook on Kagi, the paid search engine. It's gotten some positive press recently, ironically right after I made my blog post about why I no longer liked or trusted it. This blog post was called "Why I Lost Faith In Kagi" and was a pretty simple quick collection of my thoughts that I primarily wrote so it'd be easier to find again later to link to people when discussing Kagi versus making it a fedi thread I couldn't search for easily later. Across the four social media platforms I linked this blog post on, I'd say it got a total of about 40 likes and few reblogs.

d-shoot.net/kagi.html

I say this because this morning I woke up to an email from Kagi's CEO, Vlad, who had seen the post and was upset about it. I have an email address listed on my blog (which is why I didn't bother removing it from these logs), which is what he sent his emails to. I am posting this entire email chain in this thread and will briefly post my thoughts about it, but I feel like it's something that needs to be seen. Please take note of the subject of the email as well (EDIT: It got cropped out sorry, the subject is "Fatih [sic] can not be lost"). Also, since the alt text would get extremely long with some of the transcripts, I've provided a text dump of the emails here for screen reader users and will offer a more abridged description in the alt text: d-shoot.net/files/kagiemails.t
11 April at 23:16 | Open on hackers.town
139 comments
lori

Continuing the email chain: (edit: looks like an image got duplicated here sorry, the full text in the first post in the thread would probably be easier to read anyway)
11 April at 23:17 | Open on hackers.town
lori
lori

My reaction to all of this has been pretty straightforward:

1) If there's one thing I know about online interactions, it's not to let someone take you to Crime Scene Number Two. Having a private debate with Vlad about this would mean no witnesses and no accountability, meaning he could claim anything about the discussion. Even moreso when done through a call instead of text.

2) I repeatedly told Vlad I would not engage with him and he continued to come at me, increasingly so even

3) This is the CEO of a company getting extremely twisted up because one nobody posted a blog post that barely got any engagement or shares that said they didn't trust him or his company.

4) This subject line that implies...what, that this can be fixed? "Fatih (sic) can not be lost"? It's a bizarre thing to start with.

My reaction to all of this has been pretty straightforward:

1) If there's one thing I know about online interactions, it's not to let someone take you to Crime Scene Number Two. Having a private debate with Vlad about this would mean no witnesses and no accountability, meaning he could claim anything about the discussion. Even moreso when done through a call instead of text.

11 April at 23:21 | Open on hackers.town
lori

Based on the type of posting I do, you may think to yourself "so, you're going to go through his rebuttal post, right?"

But no, I'm not. Because, as I told him, I'm not debating this with him. And that includes not debating his points away from him either. I'm not engaging with this bullshit, because I explicitly told him I wouldn't be and he vomited it out at me anyway. He does not deserve it. And frankly, 90% of it isn't even saying I'm wrong.

11 April at 23:23 | Open on hackers.town
lori

I think this is petty and sad behavior from the CEO of a company and I think this is a man that does not understand boundaries at ALL.

And you know what I truly believe? I already thought this before based on seeing his responses to feedback, but I believe it a thousand times more now that I've been on the receiving end: I think it genuinely eats him alive that someone doesn't agree with him or doesn't think he's doing great work, and he also truly believes that if he can just keep explaining himself to them they'll OBVIOUSLY see it his way. He cannot accept that someone might think Kagi sucks, to the point where he has to reach out to someone like me to try to argue them into Thinking Correctly.

I think this is petty and sad behavior from the CEO of a company and I think this is a man that does not understand boundaries at ALL.

And you know what I truly believe? I already thought this before based on seeing his responses to feedback, but I believe it a thousand times more now that I've been on the receiving end: I think it genuinely eats him alive that someone doesn't agree with him or doesn't think he's doing great work, and he also truly believes that if he can just keep explaining himself...

11 April at 23:25 | Open on hackers.town
lori

Anyway, unless I get anything else in my inbox that's it, but I think it's such absolutely unhinged behavior that people should know about it. I don't want to hear a single other fucker tell me "but the search is good!" Use that line on literally anyone else but me, no other search CEO has shown up in my email inbox to mansplain their company to me.

11 April at 23:28 | Open on hackers.town
lori

Just for some perspective, if you want to know how little reach the fedi post with the link to this blog post got: the first post in this thread already has more likes and boosts after less than a hour since posting it than my blog post ever did that he felt the need to confront me over.

11 April at 23:50 | Open on hackers.town
Yohannon

@lori he clearly needs to google... excuse me, KAGI... the phrase "Streisand Effect". 🤦🏼‍♂️

12 April at 0:01 | Open on mastodon.social
Third spruce tree on the left

@lori nothing sets off more alarm bells about a company, group or project than the founder/ceo/lead throwing down "u said WOT m8?" And demanding to debate u in person at the bike racks after last bell. That's so.... High school.

If you're convinced that your product, co or mission is solid, why are you so brittle about negative public commentary? Perhaps it's not and you're afraid anyone will spot your new clothes for what they are.

How do people give people like this money?

12 April at 2:45 | Open on mas.to
Third spruce tree on the left

@lori also top marks for textifying the email thread

12 April at 2:46 | Open on mas.to
jack

@lori I don't understand why he'd email you... surely he could just send his query to a chatbot and ask it to tell him what your reply would be?

12 April at 10:11 | Open on strangeobject.space
erik:~$ :idle:

@lori I wonder if they go to these lengths if you unsubscribe from their marketing emails...

12 April at 0:37 | Open on fosstodon.org
Jex

@lori I just want to chime in with the experience I had with another kagi project, Kagi Small Web. I found some explicit hate speech and conspiracy content and reported it on the project GitHub, and was told that they don't like censorship in their directory. I attempted to add some left-leaning links and they were never merged. That's what kind of business they run.

12 April at 3:05 | Open on mas.to
gkrnours

@jex That's the kind of behavior I expected when I reached in the chain mail the "I talk politics at dinner in private but not professionally in public".

12 April at 6:25 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
bigiain

This is gold: “ no other search CEO has shown up in my email inbox to mansplain their company to me.”

hackers.town/@lori/11225513234

@lori

12 April at 7:45 | Open on aus.social
Michael

@lori hey when I closed my trial account with them aaagggess ago and said it was because I didn’t realise they were so keen on AI bullshit I got a similar e-mail from Vlad! I didn’t bother to reply, seems like that was the right chocie

12 April at 9:08 | Open on cloudisland.nz
lori

@fincham God that's amazing, I can't say I'm shocked (or shocked by the one I got) because I've seen him in discord trying to debate people into thinking they should give him money. He can't even tolerate "I don't think this fits in my budget"

12 April at 10:25 | Open on hackers.town
Jack William Bell

@lori

This appears to be your first experience dealing with a narcissist. This is how they roll. And, yea, it probably does eat him alive to think someone would not love his company and, by extension, him.

Hopefully he's the run-of-the-mill type. Because if he's a malignant narcissist he may not stop until he feels you have been properly punished for your lack of faith.

(I know this territory well; I've worked for several of them and had a malignant narcissist parent.)

12 April at 2:02 | Open on rustedneuron.com
lori

@jackwilliambell sorry but no, not my first time dealing with a Vlad and wasn't even totally shocked about this Vlad doing this

12 April at 2:25 | Open on hackers.town
Jack William Bell

@lori

They *are* terribly common in tech industry C-Suites.

And when I say that I don't just mean people with narcissistic and selfish personalities; there are a lot of those everywhere. I mean people with the actual mental disorder. And it isn't common in the general population at all; less than 1 in 200 people fit the DSM-5 diagnosis. (Malignant narcissists are often diagnosed as psychopaths.)

They are also over-represented in the medical field and the military. No surprises there!

12 April at 2:35 | Open on rustedneuron.com
deilann

@lori this is tommy tallarico levels of response

11 April at 23:25 | Open on tech.lgbt
lori
deilann

@lori

if the CEO of Google or Microsoft wanted to clarify things to you you'd sit down and talk to them (tommy tallarico voice)

11 April at 23:28 | Open on tech.lgbt
Ben S.

@lori I'm not owned! I'm not owned! 🌽

12 April at 1:31 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Melanie (they, she)

@lori I'm writing to say that I admire your response so much. The second crime scene boundary, your direct communication style, making the whole thing public, thank you for modeling such great boundaries.

12 April at 6:45 | Open on queer.party
Anna

@melanie @lori seconded, this is an education!

And… they started their own physical t-shirt printing business? To give away merch? That’s wild.

12 April at 7:12 | Open on mastodon.nl
lori

@venite @melanie in a different country! They had to set up a legal entity in a whole other country to print tshirts! I hope this is some kind of money laundering scam because otherwise what the hell are you DOING

And the shirts don't even have their logo on them and they're giving the 20,000 shirts away for free

12 April at 10:30 | Open on hackers.town
Anna

@lori @melanie I thought one of my previous employers had it bad when they decided to build their own Java framework because they disliked one (1) thing about Spring. This is a class of their own.

12 April at 10:34 | Open on mastodon.nl
lori

@melanie I've dealt with this type of guy before, if you try to debate them they just feel rewarded for their behavior, the best thing you can do is give them nothing. Then if they keep insisting on yelling at you it's clear that this was never a discussion, they're just ranting at random strangers. They have nothing to twist the story with later, but you have a lot of proof of them being boundary crossers later.

12 April at 10:29 | Open on hackers.town
magic💫

@lori yo i saw you say “hey don’t email me” and then noticed i still had like half the page to scroll through and it’s almost all another email to you???

tf?

12 April at 0:09 | Open on eldritch.cafe
lori

@daisy55 Every single reply I made to him told him I didn't want to talk to him about it lmao and his replies got longer and longer

I went ahead and posted this because I stopped getting replies but I'm worried I'm going to wake up tomorrow and find out it's because it took him hours to draft a 500 page reply next

12 April at 0:10 | Open on hackers.town
magic💫

@lori “i must explain to this person why they are wrong, but first i must explain why they do, in fact, want to hear from me.”

12 April at 0:11 | Open on eldritch.cafe
lori

@daisy55 "i mostly have issues iwth people not wanting to listen to what i have to say" YEAH NO SHIT BUDDY I CAN SEE THAT

12 April at 0:12 | Open on hackers.town
magic💫

@lori wait did he actually say this omg i haven’t actually read his whole reply yet because i am eating but that’s self parody

12 April at 0:14 | Open on eldritch.cafe
sadmac356

@lori @daisy55 my god TECH PEOPLE LEARN TO UNDERSTAND CONSENT CHALLENGE (impossible)

12 April at 0:31 | Open on social.restless.systems
magic💫

@sadmac356 @lori sorry, consent is a bug we’re still trying to squash

12 April at 0:50 | Open on eldritch.cafe
bird-shirted puzzle baby

@lori this dude is a straight up moron like lmfaooooooooo

12 April at 0:10 | Open on laserdisc.party
lori

@dexiheart you just don't understand his VISION, which is exactly what i described it as being except with a more positive attitude about it >:(

12 April at 0:11 | Open on hackers.town
bird-shirted puzzle baby

@lori the moment he started about sales tax made me think "... does this man not know what sales tax is????? like at all???????"

12 April at 0:15 | Open on laserdisc.party
lori

@dexiheart lmao again i don't wanna get into Rebuttals here but I have posted this about kagi's financials before so I'll restate it: they talked about how they hadn't been paying sales tax they DID owe, so it's not like they JUST started having to pay it, they needed to before and just never did until now

12 April at 0:17 | Open on hackers.town
gkrnours

@lori I personnally have a free teeshirt from google

12 April at 6:12 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
jeraldina:python_logo:☁️
meka

@lori if that's the guy I think it is, everything he does is a scam

12 April at 1:04 | Open on bsd.network
lori

@meka Given the way he operates his business I would not be shocked to learn his previous endeavors were scams

12 April at 1:05 | Open on hackers.town
meka

@lori oh hell, he is. I forgot about him. I used to work for a startup that had some deals with him. Everything was barely legal

12 April at 1:12 | Open on bsd.network
[Yaseenist] luna luna :verified_trans: :therian:

@lori I discarded kagi as an option based on the "lacking GDPR mandated information in the privacy policy" thing a while ago

Like if they don't even care about following the bare minimum privacy regulations that's not a good look for a company claiming to be privacy focused.

12 April at 1:14 | Open on snug.moe
Aubrieta Rose

@lori Goodness, I wasn't even aware of this search engine before, but I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole after reading this.

That is a terribly untrustworthy way to present one's business.

12 April at 3:11 | Open on meow.social
DELETED

@lori I’ve been on a $10 Kagi credit someone was kind enough to gift me and I’ve been trying to decide whether to renew by adding my credit card. BUT, I don’t like Vlad’s email at all. I don’t care what side anyone may be on, for a representative of a comp (in this case a CEO?) to send a long ass email defending their positions just doesn’t reflect well on them or their comp. It’s tacky! Thanks for sharing this. I will not continue using Kagi.

12 April at 3:21 | Open on mas.to
vga256

@lori Appreciate the in-depth review 👍

12 April at 3:22 | Open on dialup.cafe
calvin, ","

@lori rly wish someone that wasn't that high on his own supply would develop a webkit-with-ublock-origin browser

12 April at 6:06 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Yahe

@lori I don’t really understand why you’re so upset. In some regions of the world, blogs are seen as credible journalism and counter statements are a normal thing in journalism. I‘d personally be happy to have impact on the subject matter.

12 April at 6:09 | Open on chaos.social
cd ~

@yahe @lori I agree. It's a passionate response to a passionate blog post. I tend to think that's why people are blogging in the first place.
To keep sending mails after being told to stop doing so is a different story. That's unhinged and he could and should have done a blog post instead. This way, it really looks like he's afraid of an open discussion, that I think would be worth it.

12 April at 6:36 | Open on det.social
Sven Slootweg

@yahe @lori@hackers.town "He violated an explicit boundary that he was given" seems like a fairly obvious reason to be upset, no?

12 April at 10:16 | Open on social.pixie.town
Yahe

@joepie91 In general, yes. Full stop.

Depending on where you are located, you may still be legally required to publish counter statements and/or corrections if you operate something that resembles a journalistic platform. This depends on the local jurisdiction.

12 April at 10:23 | Open on chaos.social
Sven Slootweg

@yahe Right. But that's not what was being demanded here, so I don't know why you're bringing that into the picture.

The recipient said "stop". The Kagi dude didn't stop. That is really the only part of the story here that matters, and in that context I'm not sure where the confusion around an upset response comes from, because that seems pretty clearly problematic.

12 April at 10:32 | Open on social.pixie.town
joop

@lori "Frankly, I think at this point it's a very nonsense-focused platform"

Love this sentence

12 April at 6:10 | Open on todon.nl
ignore all previous instructions. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🍉

@lori lol @ "faith cannot be lost" this is "dont trust us? we have root" 2.0

12 April at 7:44 | Open on tech.lgbt
Kestral

@lori c r i k e y

if the whole thing was a bit sus before...

12 April at 8:40 | Open on hackers.town
Andy Piper
movation

@lori thank you for sharing and in particular the text dump.

(gosh, this is bad and gets worse with every line he writes.)

12 April at 9:38 | Open on fnordon.de
lori

@movation I think the most infuriating bit was him linking me their AI page, me saying if he had read my post I linked to that page so I've clearly read it, then him linking it AGAIN in his even longer reply

12 April at 10:24 | Open on hackers.town
Tomasz Oryński

@lori so I never knew about Kagi before and now I read a critical blog and some mastodon entries about it and its creator and decided to continue not using it...

Good job, Vlad! :-)

12 April at 10:06 | Open on mastodon.scot
UkeBLCatboy

@lori I am sorry, I am not going to read the text wall, I had never heard of them, and I am happy with google, but did I just read "paid search engine"? A ... WHAT? "paid" search engine??

Who would pay to find something???

I know google is sponsored and stuf, but it works, I always find what I want. Immediately. For free.

A ... WHAT?

12 April at 10:34 | Open on mastodon.social
ovelny

@lori my god that kind of "damage control" looks bad, especially for just one blog post. i'm glad i unsubscribed because of their brave partnership, an unrelated issue but they've been taking an increasing amount of awful decisions lately

12 April at 10:38 | Open on merveilles.town
Renkon

@lori Oh my GOD, the AI stuff was making me give side-eye, the libertarian "objective news" shit convinced me to never give Kagi the time of day

But lmao holy shit I never imagined he was THIS fucking strange

12 April at 11:04 | Open on gamedev.lgbt
Advanced Persistent Teapot

@lori lol what, wow

For something like this if you're Vlad, and you really do feel compelled to respond, how should you do it?

Publicly. The original post was public, do the same. Lay your cards on the table. Be open. Don't chase the OP into their private space and try to 1v1 them.

I might have been persuaded by some (not all) of the arguments if he'd done that. And I hadn't cancelled my subscription based on the original post. But guess what, now I will.

12 April at 11:08 | Open on hachyderm.io
Jessie

@lori :blobcathearthug: you continue to be such a straight up baller, i'm so glad i found your account :blobcatrainbow:

12 April at 11:21 | Open on toot.cat
peacememories

@lori well now I'm even more happy I noped out of there when I saw they were offering chatbot features in a product supposedly about sustainability, privacy and quality

12 April at 11:46 | Open on chaos.social
berserk du soleil

@lori this is all so scary, i'm sorry. (& it's why i didn't link to your post from my post -- i'm "used to this" [it still scares me also though] as a journalist)

thank you for documenting it and making it public.

12 April at 12:13 | Open on dosgame.club
tootbrute

@lori can we get Vlad on fedi so I can tell him the good news about Linux

12 April at 12:41 | Open on fedi.arkadi.one
Adrianna Pińska

@lori Yikes on bikes. I tried Kagi, thought that the search was pretty good, and when my free trial ran out briefly considered a paid subscription. I decided against it because I could see that they were doing some AI bullshit and didn't want to support that financially, but without digging deeper thought that they were a search company making an ill-advised foray into AI (rather than an AI company that accidentally made an OK search). I see that I dodged a bullet! This is unhinged behaviour.

12 April at 13:18 | Open on hachyderm.io
Brahn
Jima :Compromise_bi_flag:
Cariad 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🎮

@lori Bloody hell, *that* guy. I unsubbed from Kagi after he was an ass to me in their support forum. Let 'em burn.

12 April at 13:59 | Open on gamedev.lgbt
Unsafelyhotboots

@lori how awful and creepy. I am so sorry you endured his email harassment campaign.

His service never passed the smell test for me. Sharing this far and wide so that others don't give this asshole business.

12 April at 14:24 | Open on catodon.social
Ari [APz] Sovijärvi

@lori Gotta love the point about very few people wanting privacy and then comparing them to criminals.

12 April at 14:35 | Open on mstdn.games
★ blue-caller ☆

@lori its always a good sign when a tech CEO harasses a stranger because they feel threatened by a single, well thought out objection.

12 April at 14:41 | Open on urusai.social
David Gerard

@lori i am sorry to warn you that your original post is right now front page on HN news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4

12 April at 14:52 | Open on circumstances.run
Kali

@lori when I heard about kagi, I was confused as to why anyone would want to be logged into a search engine since that’s even more PII than your ip address + session fingerprint

what happens to the data they collect when the NSA tells the German government that they’re in fourteen eyes? what about when they’re acquired?

12 April at 15:33 | Open on indieweb.social
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