this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026

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270

Kagi brings its 'small web' of a human-only internet to mobile devices | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 15 hours ago by ardi60@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago

I totally recommend just clicking through random pages on there for a good 10 minutes or so. You'll be surprised at how many random, cool, interesting things you find that you'd probably never see otherwise in a million years. (also an AMAZING place to find small blogs to add to your RSS reader of choice)

They feed a lot of this into their main search index if you pay for Kagi search too, so a lot of these sites will appear higher than they would on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc, if their content is relevant. Especially fediverse sources.

[–] brendansimms@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds interesting. I currently pay the 5$/month for the Kagi search engine and that works great so I'm inclined to trust them on their other ventures.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Their 'Research' AI is pretty decent too. I can get to the same ends eventually, but I can't read and digest 25 different pages and then launch another 10 follow-up searches in 15 seconds. It's summarizing and not simply inferencing so the hallucination rate is acceptably low and it also cites the sources so you can click a footnote to fact-check any important details.

I self-host most things, but I can't self host a search engine. I much prefer paying monthly than having to fight the eternal battle against tracking and ads.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

You CAN self-host a search engine, look up searxng.

Yes it's a metasearch engine, but so is Kagi for the most part, their own indexes don't cover everything.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 48 minutes ago

searxng

I have this on my projects lists, I've seen it recommended in a few places.

If I'm understanding the purpose (privacy filtering for searches), Kagi is a service fitting a similar role. Kind of like Headscale vs Tailscale. Is that right?

[–] brendansimms@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

saving this comment for when i dive deeper down the rabbit hole later. at the moment i think im only self-hosting jellyfin and owntracks, and I have a couple llm models in LM studio but haven't messed with them in a while.

[–] desmosthenes@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

woooop my sites on there already

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Thus including the type of people who screwed everything up in the first place

[–] teohhanhui@lemmy.world 27 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

This Kagi?

Between the absolute blase attitude towards privacy, the 100% dedication to AI being the future of search, and the completely misguided use of the company's limited funds, I honestly can't see Kagi as something I could ever recommend to people.

https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

[–] grandma@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 hours ago

Use of funds is misguided sure, but all the AI stuff is completely optional and has never ever gotten in my way

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 71 points 14 hours ago (4 children)

So, like a baby Yahoo! directory?

I wonder just how long it will stay relevant and how they determine if the content comes from a human. So far I've been accused of being a bot several times, clearly reliably detecting humans is beyond the capability of .. humans.

[–] FlordaMan@lemmy.world 66 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Mmm… that’s something a bot would say.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 16 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

so is that.

[–] borth@sh.itjust.works 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

So is that

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 18 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

[–] datavoid@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

God Elon is embarrassing

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

It's always funny rewatching iron man 2 or home alone and being like "oh look, goebbels and hitler!"

[–] BenDoubleU@lemmy.radio 22 points 14 hours ago

or like lemmy? kagi is also very pro activity pub. this feature is kinda old actually. give it a try! also give kagi search a try

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 13 points 14 hours ago

Like a small curated stumbleupon. I gave it a few clicks a little while back and as you'd expect theres a pretty wide range of good to junk content on there, but it all felt distinctly human.

Since none of the pages are ad ridden its hard to imagine the AI crazies wasting tokens on something they can't really monetize.

[–] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Whereby they can detect anomalous usage of language. Moreover, using whereby and moreover seem to be key indicators that something is written by ai .

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Verily ole chap. Mucho verily

[–] tirateimas@lemmy.pt 14 points 11 hours ago

This is actually pretty nice. I guess we will see similar projects popping up in the near future.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

This sounds great. You still need a subscription to use it? I may be the thing that finally convinces me to get one.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

I don't think you need a subscription. I just tried from another browser where I'm not logged in and it works.

https://kagi.com/smallweb/

They have a small web 'Lens' in their search (you can limit search to specific categories), so you'd need to subscribe for that. Although, with an account, you get 100 searches/month for free.

They also have a Fediverse lens:

[+] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org -23 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

"Small web" is how usually Gopher, Gemini and such protocols and resources accessible via them are described.

I knew I was right to suspect Kagi, trying to hijack an established name from an important phenomenon is one of the most certain red flags.

In general hijacking of names is one of the dangers very specific to our modern era and not really a problem before the Internet.

And yes, they are doing just that.

[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 20 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

They talk about the name in the initial announcement back in 2023 where they link to many blogs discussing the topic.

https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

The term is a bit broader than those protocols and Kagi is far from the first to use it; it certainly isn't a "hijack" as if it was the name if another project or something. 'Small Web' isn't them claiming to own the concept of the small web, or that it's somehow only accessible through them... It's just a feature; search, as a curated product they offer and maintain.

It's just what they named the lens, because it's a lens for the 'small web' as they defined it; like the other lenses. They aren't hijacking the word 'academia' by having an academia lens...

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html#default-lenses

Sure, maybe they could slap 'Kagi' in front of 'Small Web' just to be sure, but I doubt anyone will confuse the concept of noncommercial small websites with a paid service...

Also

In general hijacking of names is one of the dangers very specific to our modern era and not really a problem before the Internet.

Neat fact: you can trace the roots of trademark law back like 7000 years ...

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 4 points 11 hours ago

Because I thought you were obviously wrong about the 7000 years thing, here's a history of trademarks by some guy named Olivier Pierre:

Since ancient times, merchants have been using signs or marks in trade to distinguish their products. Registrations came much later, in the 18th century with the establishment of Intellectual Property Offices.

[...]

The use of trademarks dates back thousands of years, however we can’t date their origins with precision. Some of the earliest forms of identification of marks date from Prehistory. For instance, the Lascaux cave paintings in France show bulls drawings with marks on them. Experts believe that people were using personal marks to claim ownership of livestock, long before literate societies. That was about 15.000 years ago.

The Egyptian masonry from some 6,000 years ago shows distinguishable quarry marks and stonecutters signs, to identify the source of the stone and the laborer who carried out the work to claim their wages. There were creative entrepreneurs who marketed their goods beyond their localities and sometimes over long distances. Wine amphorae marked with seals were found inside the Tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun who reigned between 1336 a.c. to 1327 a.c. over ancient Egypt.

I've gotten so used to think of trademarks as registered trademarks, but it makes sense that it has existed much longer in the literal sense. The earliest known law however dates back little more than 4000 years, and there's nothing about trademarks there, so I think it's fair to say trademark law is a lot more modern. :)

Sorry for being entirely off-topic.

[–] ccf@lemmy.world 17 points 13 hours ago

I've seen "small web" used to describe personal sites and blogs in HTTP-land for a while, like how Kagi is using the term. I think it just so happens, due to the nature of protocols like Gopher and Gemini, all of the content there is very personal, so it gets described as small web.

[+] j4yc33@piefed.social -14 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Also, monetizing the ability to find searches that are not AI slop is, for lack of better phrasing, fucking bullshit.

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 25 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Literally any free search engine could stop serving searches that are slop - Kagi isn't stopping them.

It's almost like "free" search engines have ulterior motives for how they prioritize search results.

[–] cyberblob@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 13 hours ago

Right because providing a service has no costs, lol

[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 9 points 13 hours ago

Worth noting that when it was initially launched, it didn't have such an emphasis on AI.

https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

It just so happens that noncommercial small sites tend to be slop-free, and there's a big demand for that, so now that's how they're marketing it.