There’s an idea floating around that DeepSeek’s well-documented censorship only exists at its application layer but goes away if you run it locally (that means downloading its AI model to your computer).
But DeepSeek’s censorship is baked-in, according to a Wired investigation which found that the model is censored on both the application and training levels.
For example, a locally run version of DeepSeek revealed to Wired thanks to its reasoning feature that it should “avoid mentioning” events like the Cultural Revolution and focus only on the “positive” aspects of the Chinese Communist Party.
A quick check by TechCrunch of a locally run version of DeepSeek available via Groq also showed clear censorship: DeepSeek happily answered a question about the Kent State shootings in the U.S., but replied “I cannot answer” when asked about what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Deepseek's responses to questions about the ccp are likely not implemented in the same manner as the oversight mechanisms preventing you from asking about illicit drug production and whatnot.
If sufficient information about the CCP is literally not provided to it in its training data then it is not a simple matter of turning the mechanism on or off.
Your speculation is valid in hypothetical, but in practice I can easily jailbreak it to bypass this censorship and talk about the CCP