Why could one assume so? Are there any explicit links? Or just because it's a Chinese company it's of course compromised and to be shunned?
There was a conversation with some western dev how they kept saying Chinese devs don’t work with scale like Meta/Google do, so they don’t have experience in it either. That was also an interesting thread to read, because without thinking about anything else, WeChat itself has more than 1B users. I’m not sure if it’s pure ignorance, or just people want to feel better about themselves.
I agree that a good chunk of Chinese apps’ UX is trash though.
It is trash because you're thinking with the mind of a Westerner. These apps are created and optimized for Chinese audiences, and they interact in a different way.
Taobao's shop by image is pretty game changing. Whether or not they were the first to do it, they seem to be the most successful iteration of it.
I feel like Chinese UX flows tend to be more clunky than Western ones but I have a certain liking for high information density apps, and find uncluttered screens sometimes a bit annoying and overly patronising.
I thought bullet chat on Bilibili was a very fun concept that probably doesn't translate quite as well to western media but YouTube has come up with a nifty half way by flashing comments with timestamps under the video
That being said, they still use apps like Chrome, Safari, all the other common apps like ours. So they have both UXs available for them, I guess.
Historically, if Chinese software has been installed on your computer, it's been malware.
Chinese software deserves the reputation it has.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chine...
[1] https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/fbi-forces-chine...
[3] https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/chinese-malware-rem...
Like there are 1.4B people in China, obviously there are bad actors. Writing off an average software as a malware ridden crap is kinda weird. And again, the main users of Chinese software are… mainland Chinese. Whether we like it or not, they have very impressive track record of making it run and scale to humongous users.
Anyways, I think I deviated far from my point and sound like a general China-shill.
The open source model is just the bait to make you think they are sincere and generous - chat.deepseek.com is the real game. Almost no-one is going to run these models - they are just going to post their secrets (https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/4-2-of-workers-have-pasted-c...)
From the rest, it works the same as in the US. If the government comes with a lawful order for you to do something, you'll do it or be held responsible for ignoring it.
There's no way to really tell. An authoritarian state like China can decide to control this company at any time, if it chooses to, through more direct or indirect means.
A well known story on this subject: https://www.wired.com/story/jack-ma-isnt-back/
You're trying very hard to make it seem like China isn't doing anything different than western countries for some reason.
I’m always amazed when people ignore this. One day it’ll be stories about the CIA or whatever agency demanding data from a big tech company, with gag orders so they legally can’t even tell anyone. The next it’ll be a story about TikTok or DJI being bad because the Chinese government has influenced over them.
All big governments are like this.
(not that I support CCP, the requirement do sound ominous to me)
(We shouldn’t postulate on rationale behind downvotes, but it’s not a good look for criticism to be downvoted regularly)
How did you check?
The antidote for the CCP stuffs, is to alter your mind and accept that the CCP is no longer an ideological party, but a club of social elites. Whether that's a good thing is of course open to debate.