I cancelled my Kagi subscription as soon as they started rolling out their "AI" features.
Edit: Otherwise I was happy to pay a monthly fee for privacy respecting search. Now I use a mix of 4Get, SearXNG, Startpage
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
I cancelled my Kagi subscription as soon as they started rolling out their "AI" features.
Edit: Otherwise I was happy to pay a monthly fee for privacy respecting search. Now I use a mix of 4Get, SearXNG, Startpage
their “AI” features
Oh :(. Looks like they must have still viewed you as a product rather than a paying customer... It seems they must have calculated that training models on your data and selling those would make them more money than just raising the price of the subscription. I suppose the structural problem then is that selling your data is something a business can always do to make a buck regardless of if you are (or aren't) already paying them.
How does tracking the websites you visit, including the amount of time you spend there, stop surveillance?
Hmm that's a very good question. I guess you could even argue that the current model is better because there is no single tracker and your data is split between multiple competing entities (Google Analytics, Facebook, ...). I suppose the model I'm proposing would only be better if the party reading your history and distributing funds according to it could be trusted not to sell that info (perhaps if it was forced to be a nonprofit or such?). Perhaps it would even be possible to solve it in a way that your browsing history would never have to leave your device, and the micropayments could be made directly by your web browser as you browsed. Ie. each http request would come with a micropayment attached.
I suspect that people wouldn't actually be that averse to paying for things as long as the prices were miniscule (>=1 cent)
I think that a good portion of people not wanting more subscription fees (beyond constant enshitification of many, if not must commercial services) comes down to a much bigger societal issue. The vast majority of the population in the West has been getting poorer and poorer every year for the last half-century. And the rate has been accelerating thanks to unfettered neoliberal capitalism, open corruption, and the largest upwards transfer of wealth in human history occurring in the last half-decade. With the majority of people in the West either living paycheck to paycheck or very near it.
People simply can't afford to pay what necessary Internet software is actually worth.