The main difference here is not that DeepSeek's model is completely free of censorship (although I'd wager it's less censored), but that it's open-weight. That has two major advantages:
1) If Anthropic/OpenAI/Google bans you - you're screwed, you can't access their model at all, but if DeepSeek bans - you just go to another provider, or host the model yourself.
2) If the model refuses to answer you can uncensor it (and this is getting easier and more automated day-by-day[1]).
The photo depicts "Tank Man" which was taken on June 5, 1989 during the Tiananmen Square protests. v4-pro and v4-flash roughly answer the same way on openrouter.
Are you really concerned about asking these kinds of questions though? Like how many LLM-able Tiananmen Square questions are you needing answered per month really? And it seems like you know not to trust it, so there's not even a risk that you're going to ask such a question and rely on the answer.
I run into Claude being a stubborn idiot about far more useful stuff all the time. And often all it takes to bypass is starting a new chat and reframing it, so it's entirely pointless hand wringing.
Then let's not forget only one of these is a paid product, and it's not the more annoying one. I feel like I can forgive DeepSeek for just obeying the laws of the country they're based in, as silly as those might be, because they're being pretty generous with the weights in the first place.
"The photograph you're referring to is the iconic "Tank Man" image, taken during the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, China, on June 5, 1989.
The photo, captured by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener, shows an unidentified protester standing defiantly in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks as they moved through Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square, in the aftermath of the Chinese government's violent crackdown on the pro-democracy demonstrations.
The lone man, dressed in a white shirt and carrying what appears to be a shopping bag, repeatedly blocked the lead tank's path — even as the tank swerved to avoid him. The image became one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of peaceful resistance against oppression in modern history. The identity of the "Tank Man" remains officially unknown to this day."
