> In fact, this chatbot comes with an even bigger risk: DeepSeek is legally required to comply with the Chinese government’s demands for data access and content control, with no legal recourse to resist.
Oh come on. How is that any different from using an American AI chatbot, with them being required to comply with American data access and content control laws? If anything, the Chinese authorities can do nothing to harm any American, whereas the American government -- at all levels -- can do an awful lot to use what Americans say against them.
In other words: Why the assumption that the Chinese government is my enemy, and the US government is my friend?
I'd add that in much of the world people are already beginning to view things very differently. One of the top Japanese political commenters on Twitter, @japantank, wrote a couple of days ago: "Many people say that DeepSeek is at a disadvantage in development because they cannot say anything unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, but major Western tech companies are dominated by political correctness and have far more restrictions.
Gemini and other platforms are more likely to not answer political questions than DeepSeek."
If you're American, you're safer using a Chinese chatbot. The Chinese government has literally no authority over you and American authorities will not cooperate with (or even receive) Chinese government requests. The Chinese won't even bother to sell you ads. As an individual, you're of zero interest to them.
For the same reason, if you're Chinese, you're safer using an American chatbot, or running your own local instance of llama or Deepseek.
If you're European... uhhh... it doesn't matter. There are no European options. But you're marginally safer, if you're doing anything risky or dissident-like, with the Chinese option.
It addressed the nonsense: "If you are Chinese or European, etc, it'd make more sense that the government you are sharing to doesn't matter"
If you're American, it matters even more, and every American should make some effort to host their digital materials offshore. (To restate what I wrote below, this was Proton's entire raison d'etre!!) The USA is demonstrably more willing to spy on its own citizens and lock them up than China or any European nation. For e.g., in an incarceration rate nearly 5x higher than China's.
Of course I'm not going to answer irrelevant personal questions.
Glad I wasn't the first to think it. But I'm more disappointed that this is coming from Proton. Wiz did their research and published it without politics. Proton couldn't help themselves.
iirc in the first months of openai fame, wasn't it leaking conversations across users?
Yeah, there's some serious irony here. Or hypocrisy.
When Proton was founded, their main selling point was that they store your data outside the USA, in Switzerland, and vigorously fight to protect your privacy from US government intrusion. Surely they realize, if only privately, that Americans who fear government action are even safer with their data stored in China. The Swiss comply with US government requests; the Chinese don't even bother to respond, barring rare DEA cases that are handled out of Hong Kong, and even those are becoming more and more infrequent.
As for OpenAI, they literally trained on LibGen and now they throw a fit about Deepseek "stealing"? lol, lmao even.
Oh come on. How is that any different from using an American AI chatbot, with them being required to comply with American data access and content control laws? If anything, the Chinese authorities can do nothing to harm any American, whereas the American government -- at all levels -- can do an awful lot to use what Americans say against them.
In other words: Why the assumption that the Chinese government is my enemy, and the US government is my friend?
I'd add that in much of the world people are already beginning to view things very differently. One of the top Japanese political commenters on Twitter, @japantank, wrote a couple of days ago: "Many people say that DeepSeek is at a disadvantage in development because they cannot say anything unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, but major Western tech companies are dominated by political correctness and have far more restrictions. Gemini and other platforms are more likely to not answer political questions than DeepSeek."
https://x.com/JapanTank/status/1883780805119582538