[smsm42]

> Any system that can check balance, can link searches to a user.

I don't think it's true. I can immediately see at least two ways how it can be done without identifying the user.

1. Each user gets X tokens at the beginning of the month. When searching, user supplies a token, which is immediately burned. The token does not contain the user identity, just signature validating it's a valid token.

2. Variation of the above: each user gets a token good for X searches at the beginning of the month. When searching, the system will return a token good for N-1 search each time token good for N searches is presented. Again, no need to contain user identity anywhere in the system.

Of course, both solutions have their downsides (sync between multiple devices, stealing tokens, losing tokens, etc.) but it id definitely possible. And I am sure if somebody spent a little time thinking on it, these ideas can be seriously improved to eliminate the downsides without introducing the need to identify the user.

[phil9909]

In both these cases the search engine provider could easily store your identity together with your token while issuing it and recover the identity once the token is used without any way to prove this from the outside. They could even issue tokens in the form AES_ENC("SOME KEY ONLY THEY HAVE", USER_ID | counter) and you would not notice. You would have to trust them that they won't do this, which is no improvement to the current thing Kagi does (saying they won't collect any data, while admitting they can't prove it, you just have to trust them).

[smsm42]

I think there's a fundamental difference between "X can not be implemented" and "can we trust this provider to implement X correctly"? In this case, it can be implemented without violating privacy. But of course you need to trust them to actually implement what they say and not instead put 9000 trackers in each page and track your every movement like certain other big companies do. But these are different things - the comment upstream claimed that the subscription system can not be implemented with privacy. This is not true - it can be. Whether or not a particular provider would implement it, and whether we can trust them that they did - that's a different question, which is also important but does not change the answer to the original one.