Watching the drama around kagi unfold and it has me wondering how much you take into consideration a creator’s view on things like homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. when deciding to use a product. I think most of us have a bar somewhere (I would imagine very few on this website would ever consider registering on an altright platform), so where is that bar for you? What about art? Have you boycotted JKR or dropped your opinion about Picasso because they’re transphobic and misogynistic respectively? Is it about the general vibe of a product or piece of media, or are you more discerning? What goes into this decision and why?

  •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) English
    3•6 months ago

    How much does a creator’s worldview influence whether you use their tech or consume their media?

    Depending on what we call “worldview”… either 0%, or 100%.

    In this particular case:

    SearXNG

    SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.

    • OpenSource
    • Free
    • Self-hostable
    • User configurable

    Kagi

    Kagi Inc. is a company […]

    • Closed
    • For profit
    • Not verifiable, not controllable
    • You pay for the privilege

    Google, Bing, etc.

    • Closed
    • For profit
    • Not verifiable, not controllable
    • You don’t pay, you’re the product

    How much does their respective owner’s worldview matter to me?

    • Being open and verifiable: 100%
    • Giving full control to the user: 100%
    • Wanting to sell my tracking data: 0%
    • Misrepresenting their intentions: 100%
    • Having an unrelated opinion about politics, religion, human rights, or other: 0%

    As for art, my opinion of the art doesn’t change whether I think the artist is a great or a horrible person; doing otherwise would be either dishonest… or imply the art can’t stand on by itself (I call that kind of art “trash”, no matter the author).