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Comment by wumeow | Hacker News Reader

> To my understanding, most people, even in tech, disregard and look down on Chinese software

Historically, if Chinese software has been installed on your computer, it's been malware.

I have not said that Deepseek models are bad. Quite the opposite. I'm impressed by them. I have just questiened that they are just some chinese startup.

Yes, they also had very bad hardware in the past. That does not say anything to their current level of exports.

No, they absolutely export malware still. All of DJI's apps need to be sideloaded on android because the obfuscated data collection they do is not allowed in Play Store apps[0]. TikTok uses an obfuscated VM to do user tracking[1]. Then there's the malware that the US government has to routinely delete from compromised computers [2][3]

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...

Fair points. I guess, market doesn’t care about software being malware, given both of your examples are the leading products in the world within their own market segments.

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.

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