im not an expert at criticism, but I think its fair from their part.

I mean, can you remind me what are the hardware requirements to run deepseek locally?
oh, you need a high-end graphics card with at least 8 GB VRAM for that*? for the highly distilled variants! for more complete ones you need multiple such graphics card interconnected! how do you even do that with more than 2 cards on a consumer motherboard??

how many do you think have access to such a system, I mean even 1 high-end gpu with just 8 GB VRAM, considering that more and more people only have a smartphone nowadays, but also that these are very expensive even for gamers?
and as you will read in the 2nd referenced article below, memory size is not the only factor: the distill requiring only 1 GB VRAM still requires a high-end gpu for the model to be usable.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/amd-released-instructions-for-running-deepseek-on-ryzen-ai-cpus-and-radeon-gpus

https://bizon-tech.com/blog/how-to-run-deepseek-r1-locally-a-free-alternative-to-openais-o1-model-hardware-requirements#a6

https://codingmall.com/knowledge-base/25-global/240733-what-are-the-system-requirements-for-running-deepseek-models-locally

so my point is that when talking about deepseek, you can't ignore how they operate their online service, as most people will only be able to try that.

I understand that recently it's very trendy, and cool to shit on Proton, but they have a very strong point here.

he's probably right. the company wants to be disruptive, and it's normal for any company to steal data. you can self host the current model, but that doesn't mean this will always be the case. certainly they will want to make a profit at some point. it's day 1 silicon valley shit