Thanks to Google killing the open web and destroying independent sites, alternatives to its failing Search engine stuffed to the brim with ads and AI have become a hot commodity. One such paid search platform, Kagi, has made some waves, especially with the deGoogling community, and it’s easy to see why. Kagi gives users control over their search results, all without tracking you or selling your data; you’re actually the customer — not the product — with Kagi. It’s refreshing, to be honest, and easily worth the subscription price.
But why stop at a search platform? There are plenty of other services that need fixing on the web, like the ridiculous state of journalism and its constant flow of fake and hate-filled news. As someone who worked in the belly of the beast for the last decade, I can vouch that things are worse than you imagine, which is why it’s refreshing to see that Kagi has launched a News site and app that is opting to use AI to scrape publicly available RSS feeds (rather than scraping that data directly from a site without their permission, which could be argued is theft) to then formulate that data into “one comprehensive daily briefing, while clearly citing sources.”
Kagi News is built to focus on facts and differing perspectives
Kagi News prominently displays sources under the title and snippet
Let’s face it, most news is biased these days, playing to their audience. It’s rare to hear both sides of an argument if you stick to a few like-minded sources. In comes Kagi News, claiming it strives for diversity and transparency — without compromising your data or security — which sounds like a good idea on paper.
Kagi News app screenshots for a single story
In practice, by and large, it looks like Kagi News is indeed making good on its promise using numerous sources, providing those sources at the top of each report, clear as day, and easy to click. While plenty of studies have shown that this still results in lower click-throughs than traditional search, it is nice to see each outlet get its due front and center.
However, not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Many of the sources I’m seeing in Kagi News I know to be biased. While numerous sources exist in each summary to try to balance out the reporting, all you have to do is skip over to the Gaming tab in Kagi News to see what happens when the only sources come from the mainstream.
Nope, I do not trust a single one of these sites; these are shitty sources
When every article has the same major sources like Eurogamer, Kataku (gross), and Polygon (even grosser), unbiased and transparent are certainly not the first words that come to mind. Why do I need a summary of sites that all provide the same opinion? Truth is, I don’t; I’m more than well aware what the mainstream press thinks, and a summary of their twisted thinking is hardly what I’m looking for. I don’t need AI to summarize slop, I need it to remove it from my purview completely and connect me with writers who aren’t paid to lie on behalf of corporations.
What happens when news sites go bankrupt or stop offering RSS?
I’m also left wondering what happens when sites decide to no longer offer a free RSS feed, or simply go bankrupt from the lack of clicks from traditional search, with AI summarizing their data without compensation and cutting out the need ever to visit that site. Where will Kagi News get its news from to summarize events when AI inevitably forces every site to hide its data or go under?
Sure, Kagi News may be tackling our clickbait problem with what looks to be mostly fairly summarized news derived from forthrightly scraped public RSS feeds, for now. But what about the future? If the only thing on the internet of the future that’s free is slop, the inevitable feedback loop will greatly harm the public’s trust in AI, which is already at an all-time low.
So far, Kagi News looks like a good idea, but there is still plenty of work to be done
Kagi News certainly offers a clean UI that is easy to navigate
Personally, I think the World News section of Kagi News is the one that’s working the best to deflate clickbait, as I’m seeing a few more varied sources in the mix compared to the Gaming section. Clearly, Kagi News is onto something, as long as it can find enough sources to offer a varied summary. This doesn’t always look to be the case, but it’s also a new service, so ideally, things will improve. I especially like that I can choose my categories and filters, say if I don’t want to see any politics in my news, so there is certainly room for users to help improve results with a little bit of work, just like a regular RSS feed reader.
I’ll definitely be using Kagi News in the future despite a few trepidations about long-term viability, not to mention the potential harm of AI summaries on the very industry I work in. The base idea is sound, news should be presented with an even hand (rather than preying on our base emotions for easy clicks), and if that takes AI to get it done, so be it. So if you’re interested in seeing what Kagi News has to offer, you can snag the app install for iOS and Android through the widgets below, or simply hop on over to the website and enjoy the feed in your browser. All instances are free, so there’s certainly no harm in taking a look.
[…] the same bullshit and opinions I can see in any number of news, RSS, and social feeds (the exact same complain I have for Kagi’s new feed). We don’t need more of the same; we need an evolution, and so far, Digg’s beta is […]