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?
A creator’s worldview influences me a whole lot on whether I’ll use their stuff or not. I don’t think we can afford the luxury of supporting jerks anymore. There’s just too much shit going on. Consuming is voting. That’s the rational part. The affective part is that when I learn that the creator’s a jerk, I just don’t feel like engaging with their stuff anymore. It’s basically a turn off for me.
The kagi controversy is unfortunate. I’ve been considering biting the bullet, but there’s no way I’m paying for a search engine I don’t feel good about. Also I very naively didn’t realize until now kagi was just aggregating Google, Yandex or whatever, stripping the advertisement rot and applying some extra magic. Won’t they get the rug pulled right from under them the second they reach any sort of relevance?