FWIW, as someone who has chosen to pay for Kagi for three years now:

- I agreee fake news is a real problem

- I pay for Kagi because I get more much more precise results[1]

- They have a public feedback forum and I think every time I have pointed out a problem they have come back with an answer and most of the time also a fix

- When Kagi introduced AI summaries in search they made it opt in, and unlike every other AI summary provider I had seen at that point they have always pointed to the sources. The AI might still hallucinate[2] but if it does I am confident that if I pointed it out to them my bug report would be looked into and I would get a good answer and probably even a fix.

[1]: I hear others say they get more precise Google results, and if so, more power to them. I have used Google enthusiastically since 2005, as the only real option from 2012, as fallback for DDG since somewhere between 2012 and 2022 and basically only when I am on other peoples devices or to prove a point since I started using Kagi in 2022

[2]: haven't seen much of that, but that might be because of the kind of questions I ask and the fact that I mostly use ordinary search.

To late to edit, but I probably started using Google somewhere between February 2001 and July 2003, not in 2005.

There's too much demand for fake news, plenty of subsidy for it, and it's far easier to make.

Non fake news is going to be restricted to pay services like Bloomberg terminals.

It is getting easier and easier to fake stuff and there are becoming less and less fully trusted institutions. So sadly I think you are right. Its scary but we are likely heading towards a future where you need to pay to get verified information and that itself will likely be segmented to different subscriptions for what information you want.

> Its scary but we are likely heading towards a future where you need to pay to get verified information

…are you describing a newspaper?

> It is getting easier and easier to fake stuff

This is why the moon landing hoax was revolutionary in the 60's. The size of this project was enormous.

As an American, confirmation that the landing was a hoax would make me even prouder than my current belief that it was real.

The moon landing was filmed. Problem is, Stanley Kubrick was such a perfectionist that he _demanded_ they film on location.

On the other hand, he shot Full Metal Jacket in England and not Vietnam, so maybe he was able to compromise ..

Yeah, they filmed it on Ganymede instead.

Haha, perhaps.

Well the thing is that technically information is free, but creating it is definitely not. So, if Ads are not paying for it, and people won't pay for it either, who does?

Fake news exists because of the perverses incentives of the system; where getting as many clicks as possible is what matters. This is very much a result of social networks and view-based remuneration.

I don't think it's that bad if people need to pay for real information...

Fake news mainly exist, because the need to disguise, manipulate and lie for power gains is probably a old as humanity.

It seems a challenging situation.. if you pay fact checkers you get accused of censorship by “weaponised free speech” and if you leave it to the community you get inconsistent results.

The first one sounds like it's an argument made by someone who never wanted the facts to begin with. Correcting misinformation is not stifling free speech.

I'm all for more proper fact checkers, backed by reputable sources.

Yes, this is the case. Fact checkers were kept alive by efforts of the big tech firms. Post Trump’s election, funding has been pulled globally.

And paid newspapers, hopefully.

At least we're going from Fake News from certain MAGA leaning sources at 75-90% fake to 99% actual news and 1% hallucinations?