No, it's just trading one centralized search product that is free and profits by using your data and manipulating you, for another that you have to pay for and profits from you more directly but still has financial incentive to keeping you engaged and searching instead of finding. Run your own decentralized SearXNG instead and take it into your own hands. Search isn't something that should be controlled by anyone who's in it for a profit.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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Buy an ad.
Imagine trying to advertise anything on the Fediverse 🌚
However this only made Mojeek more appealing
Mojeek, Gibiru & Swisscows.
Yes
I tried it and it was good, but not worth the money to me. Since that time, everything has been going more and more to shit, so while I am not there yet, everything else could eventually get shitty enough that I will maybe then be good to pay monthly for a search engine.
Mullvad Leta is the way
Feels like this is an add, but in case it's not, I use crypto to pay the lowest rate plan and this keeps me anonymous. I really like it but would strongly advise against giving a search provider your personal info which you have to do if paying by credit card. Its a much different thing having your searches linked to an IP vs your cc, name and home address.
Do you then need to buy the crypto anonymously? I'm always confused about that point
You can but I don't. You pay the crypto to Kagi through a third party pay service. Its not 100% untraceable but it's enough to keep you out of any automated tracking that Kagi is or will eventually be doing.
You can buy it anonymously, mostly through P2P exchanges and markets. But simply buying bitcoin or some other popular coin with fiat, then exchanging that to Monero and using that to buy your privacy things will work as well.
Monero is very private and anonymous.
Thanks! My barrier to using crypto has been this first purchase element. Because afaik crypto is not inherently pvt and anon?
Yes. One of the few subscriptions I have no qualms about.
I have paid for it since it started so have to say yes. Never going back to Google.
Other search engines have much worse results.