!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
I absolutely love kagi. At some point I moved to their $25 tier as I use more than just their search now.
I can't tell you if the search limit is large enough for your use but I can say that they are very generous with what they consider an individual search so you'll get much more than the stated limit.
yes!!!!
It made me enjoy the internet again. Back in the peak years, 2010 babayy!!
Pay the unlimited. Youll love it. My friends using hallucinating idiot chat bots are like woah how are you finding this (really cool, accurate , documented) information? And I'm like, the fucking internet we've had for 20 years that THEY are trying to destroy and take away from us.
Honestly I liked it when I used it. But for privacy (and since I prefer european based providers) I choose a free provider and went with Qwant in the end. I think you should go for it and try it. I don't think they necessarily track their users, but I prefer not having my searches attached to an account. They do seem to have options to mitigate that. I personally have chosen to try to limit my usage of american services and even if they align with me this is also a reason I don't use it. If I was american myself I would've maybe kept it
That makes sense. I like privacy but I don’t mind having an account if it means I have a genuinely better experience on the internet. Thank you!
They do seem to have options to mitigate these privacy concerns, I just checked. I personally have chosen to try to limit my usage of american services and even if they align with me this is also a reason I don't use it. I'm european so Qwant is like building a new european search index. This was also pretty important since from a political perspective european tech sovereignity is important to me. If I was american myself I would've maybe kept using it tho.
I use 30--40 searches per day, and I almost never need to bang to google. When I do bang to google, I consistently find worse result.
It is indeed expensive compare to most of the other donations/subscription I have, but there is really no alternative to this experience.
I use nebula, lemmy, mastodon, kagi, jellyfin, signal, thunderbird, fedora, and so on. Oh boy, let me tell you, my digital world is quite, there is nothing in my face pushing anything, and I get every update I need and gets things done. All of them cost money/donation, but I would rather spend money to save time and my mental health now...
Thank you for the response! I use nebula and have been getting into the fediverse little by little since I discovered lemmy. I even got Linux on a laptop a few months ago. Every time I switch to a more open source or consumer focused service I just find it so much better, which has led me here to trying out new browsers and search engines
I've been using Kagi for the last 2 years.
I use SearXNG for "easy" searches (eg: I know what I'm looking for or simply don't know a URL by heart)
I use Kagi's 300 search / month plan because for "harder" searches (eg: I have a problem I want to solve). I used to have the unlimited plan but it was not that worth for me and I dislike paying for AI features that I won't use.
Thank you! SearXNG is like a self hosted thing right? I’ve only vaguely heard about it.
I use it, I like it, though there is something in the back of my mind about the company that sets off alarm bells that I can't quite put my finger on so I'm cautious. But I don't mind the model of paying for online services in principle. I would say it's about as good as DuckDuckGo was 10 years ago when it was still good (DDG has gone downhill like a lot of things in my opinion), and Kagi is the best search I can find now. I do research for work so I need the unlimited (middle) tier since I use a lot of search, I consider it reasonable value for money. I suggest doing the free trial and see how long it takes to run out before deciding which tier to choose.
Quite a few people have suggested that so I think I’ll end up doing the free trial then a month on the lowest tier and see how things go. Thank you!
I can never go back to google. The noise reduction is insane
People using google (and amazon for that matter) severely anger and depress me. Please make it stop.
Thank you
I have been using Kagi for over two years and I love it. Worth it IMHO.
Thank you for the response! Is there anything you’ve been dissatisfied with or wish they would change/add?
I second it, i will.get the family plan once the kids go online. No need for them to ever have shitty search.
I get really annoyed if i have to use standard google now, its crazy
Not really. The platform is easily extendible/customizable, so even if there was something I wanted that it didn't do, odds are some user has created an agent to do it.
That’s awesome! Thank you!
You search and there’s no ad based front loading. No AI bot at the top getting it wrong 51% of the time.
I'm on the bottom plan. It works fine for me.
AI stuff is available, but you can also just turn it off and never see it.
The search results seem to have less garbage in them than DDG. I'm not sure if Kagi is putting more effort into their index or if they're just not being targeted as much by junk websites. Likely both.
Letting users promote and demote domains helps individuals search results and gives them a lot of information for which sites are garbage too
DDG uses Bing’s index I believe, so they’re just reranking results for you + proxying queries. The big indexes are generally low quality and DDG can show you only results from them. Kagi seems to train theirs on small web and uses user rankings to adjust, which helps a lot.
They are not without issues, they’ve been pushing for open indexing as indexing is getting harder due to AI scrapers. Cloudflare and Reddit for example make it much harder now (Reddit has an exclusivity deal with Google), but I do get results from both.
Just adding my two cents as a happy user of several years: I vastly prefer its results to ddg/google, I kinda forgot the AI stuff existed since I turned it off and it’s stayed off, and I never hit the quota when I was on the limited plan.
The real killer feature is the ability to downrank or block spammy sites IME (pinterest, fandom, etc.).
Kagi is definitely worth it.
Being able to down/up rank results to curate better sources is awesome.
As far as AI goes, it’s easily ignored. However they also rank their AI models privacy policies, so if you ever DO wan to use th AI you can make an informed decision.
It's totally worth it. And you hit the major reason for me also. "Ranking" results is fantastic. And lenses, narrowing down results to academic sources is too useful anytime you want real info.
I started with the 300mo. I was able to keep under the limit without too much effort. But eventually I upgraded and it's nice to not think about it anymore.
I'm in IT so my searches are primarily geared towards solving technical issues. I've no complaints. The summarizer is also nice if you don't want to read four paragraphs for two sentences of information.
Thank you!
It's great in my opinion! I do need the unlimited search plan but that's because I search so much. The AI stuff is pretty unobstructive too, and can pretty much be disabled if you want to. I like the way you can search lemmy with it especially.
I do not regret it.
I don’t really use the bangs to use Google instead like I did on duck duck go. I think I’ve used them a few times in a year, and heat when I was deep into not finding something which I continued to not find on google.
I haven’t had to rerank sites in a while
You can get the AI answers if you append a question mark to your query, or you can use !ki to use the AI researcher tool. It’s all opt in. They’ll also tell you how much of your AI budget you’ve used.
Under the good Kagi is an “AI” search engine using BERT architecture, which is similar to Google (it takes your natural language question and searches that, instead of classical keyword based search). That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work or doesn’t respect keywords, but sometimes you do have to quote keyword groups to enforce them.
I’m pretty sure their index is built at a higher quality than Google who are trying to answer every low quality query and maximize metrics.
I had to do the unlimited plan tbh.
It offers AI search, but you have to click it or ask a question - I think it's similar to DDG in terms of including it.
It really works as a complete search solution with maps, images, video, translation (actually the best translation site out there).
I find that I get good results, without much AI slop, SEO garbage, etc. When I use Google, DDG, or Quant on devices that are not logged in, I definitely notice it takes more effort to get to get to the results I want.
For me, it's worth it.
Thank you for the response! I think the first time I heard of Kagi was actually about their LinkedIn translations lol
I use Kagi! I average about 1,000 searches/month, so well in excess of the lower tier, but I started with 300 and there's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as you only use it that often. I've grown accustomed to using search instead of bookmarks, and doing simple things like math in the browser instead of a dedicated app, which could help prune some of that usage.
You can use the 100 free searches to gauge how long it will last you.
I personally don't have any gripes with it, between the ability to rank sites and their new initiative allowing folks to report slop sites, it seems to consistently keep me satisfied.
They do have a feedback site (https://kagifeedback.org/) where you can request new features and file bug reports. The advantage of a paid service is they are very attentive to user requests (within reason). Between their blog and changelog you can gauge how things are developing.
My budget has the flexibility that I'm happy to pay for a service that I use every day, which is aligned with my priorities. For those who don't have that flexibility, Brave functionally (but perhaps not ethically) is a strong second best option. They've been copying Kagi's homework for a while now and can do some of the same page ranking, etc.
This is really helpful! Thank you! I didn’t realize people could report slop sites. That’s a huge plus in my book
Do you know, if I type in a website in the search bar and go directly there, does that count as a search bc it uses the search bar, or does it only count if you actually load a page of results? Like if I go directly to YouTube.com or I just search YouTube and then click on the result, are those both considered a search, or just the latter? I would assume only the latter, but I’m not certain. If they both are considered a search then I’d definitely be concerned about having enough searches
Going directly there does not count as a search - you should be fine on that count. Again, you can test for free with their 100 free searches if you're concerned :)
Thank you!
I have used Kagi quite a bit, and while I love it, I stopped using it.
If either of these things weren't true I'd probably still be paying for it.
It's not expensive. For the price of a single cheap lunch. Your main gateway to the internet is no longer trying to use you to make money from advertisers. It has the largest most capable feature set of any search provider. Again for the price of a single cheap lunch. It would be the last subscription I cancel.
I suppose "expensive" is a relative term. It's expensive for me, especially when the alternative is free.
I don't know where you are. But in the US or most of Europe. Again it's a single lunch. A cheap fast food lunch. If you have a hard time affording fast food once a month, I get it. But I'd easily skip one meal for a month of better internet.
Thank you for the response! I agree that the $10 plan is too expensive for me currently but since I’m planning on cancelling another subscription the $5 plan is something I could make work, if it’s worth it
My partner loves it; I have not been willing to change my habits to use it.
One thing that I appreciate about them as a business is that if you don’t use it for a month, they don’t charge you. The subscription stays active, but doesn’t cost you anything until you start using it again. Makes it a low-risk subscription to get! (Please confirm they still do this, but it is how it worked when he signed up!)
I did see something about that but I thought I misunderstood bc it sounded too good to be true! Thank you for the reply!
I really love Kagi. Search lenses and results customization are worth the $10 and Privacy Pass is, to me, like an invaluable insurance plan.
But if you're happy with DDG, then I'd say just try Kagi for a month or two. You're going from good to great (IMO), and not dogshit to great like a Google user would be.
Had the family account for half a year or so… Ended up cancelling because I was the only one using it. And I find the personal unlimited tier too expensive for my use. I’ve been trotting around using all kinds of different search engines nowadays. Kagi is okay. But as you said they’re so heavily gearing into the AI stuff that it’s meh. Give me an AI free tier with unlimited searches and I’m back on board. I need the unlimited plan for my work, maybe I should trigger my boss again on this one.
If you can split the family plan with friends/family, the pricepoint suddenly becomes much more interesting. But all my friends laughed when I told them if they would join me on paying for search.