Comment by asmor

After exchanging about 15 emails with Vlad, I can confirm "appear measured and willing to change opinion, but zero budge". It was frustrating to be told I provide "high quality" discussion while many points remained unaddressed or just evaded into boring "we can't know intentions of search users" as if he was building a government.

For instance, he claimed both that a search engine shouldn't judge someone for searching how to commit suicide, because they might just want the equivalent of legal euthanasia in a place where it's unavailable and a global search engine should be value neutral for it can't possibly know all cultural norms, but also said "it wouldn't work" as a backup argument that was promptly ignored when I provided a study contrary to it.

I ended up feeling like Vlad has a lot of implicit beliefs that are rooted in free speech absolutism, but will rationalize via other unfalsifiable arguments (like scope creep / too many unknowns) while appearing like he'd be open to be convinced. I still use Kagi, but I'm ready to jump ship at the first opportunity.