Kagi News

Overall reception & Kagi’s business model

• Many commenters are already happy Kagi search/Assistant users and see News as consistent with its “pay for service, not ads” philosophy.
• Several note how rare it is to have a privacy‑respecting, paid alternative to ad‑driven “enshittified” products, though others say $10/mo for search still feels too high.
• Some worry Kagi is overextending (search, browser, email, maps, now news) with a small team, likening the risk to Mozilla/Proton’s sprawl; Kagi argues the ecosystem is synergistic.

Daily, finite news vs doomscrolling

• The once‑per‑day update and lack of infinite scroll are widely praised as an antidote to addictive feeds and “synthetic CDO” social media content.
• Others want more flexibility: ability to see past days, more than ~12 stories, or even weekly/monthly digests instead of daily. Kagi says a “Time Travel” archive is coming.

RSS, aggregation, and alternatives

• RSS fans are delighted Kagi both consumes and publishes RSS; others argue reliance on feeds misses sites with no RSS and that scraping is necessary for completeness.
• Several say they already get what they need from RSS readers (Miniflux, Reeder, NetNewsWire, Nextcloud News) or other aggregators (Ground News, News Minimalist, Memeorandum, 1440, Wikipedia Current Events).

LLMs, summaries, and trust

• A major thread questions the use of LLMs to “generate” stories from RSS:
  • Concerns: hallucinations, “AI slop,” vague initial disclosure, fabricated or weakly grounded “common knowledge,” and unclear use of sources (including Reddit feeds).
  • Worries about cutting newsrooms out of pageviews and revenue, and about legal/ethical exposure if summaries misrepresent or defame.
• Defenders say:
  • Summarizing multiple sources once a day is a narrow, appropriate use of LLMs.
  • Articles show citations and links; users can treat this as a meta‑RSS/link aggregator.
• Some want explicit labeling of AI text, human fact‑checking layers, or even revenue‑sharing with publishers.

Bias, coverage, and filters

• Users report US‑centric “World” coverage and odd regional skews (e.g., Scotland‑heavy UK, no French‑language Belgian sources).
• Heavy Trump presence in headlines prompts desire for robust keyword and category filters; current keyword filters can wipe out entire sections.
• There’s discomfort with some included outlets (e.g., RT) and with Kagi’s Yandex relationship; a few frame this as potential Russian influence, others say that’s overstated.

UX, language, and missing pieces

• UI is generally praised as clean and non‑clickbaity, but:
  • Navigation quirks (closing stories, back behavior), non‑persistent “read” checkmarks, and app–web sync issues are noted.
  • Language controls are too coarse: users want per‑language translation rules rather than “translate everything or nothing.”
  • Some find sections like “highlights,” “perspectives,” and “quick questions” redundant or elementary.

Deeper critiques of “fixing news”

• Several argue aggregation and summarization don’t address the real problem: weak, sensational, or underfunded journalism, lack of context/follow‑up, and structural incentives for outrage over substance.
• Others question whether most people need a news feed at all versus slower, more contextual formats (weekly digests, magazines, or simply reading primary outlets directly).