Running it offline does avoid some of the censorship, but not all. Let me explain: Failsafes are implimented to check what topics are being talked about (like tieneman square). These are not included inside the model itself (though it does have a type of post-training, reinforcement-based censorship applied to the finished model). This second type of censorship (the kind actually included in the model weights) can actually be removed by retraining using similar reinforcement techniques. This means that the Tldr is: There is censorship baked into the model but because the weights are public, it can be removed /bypassed. In contrast the deepseek web app includes both kinds of censorship (and also definitely steals your data). The local model obviously does not.

According to the people it’s about, it misrepresents them as people but not explicitly the events that took place.

What’s this actually mean? It’s not like they didn’t just switch domains and remain online? Article doesn’t mention any arrests so seems like they can just sidestep the domain seizure. Or am I wrong and there will be more action?

Yes but you will have to take extra steps to supply a valid cookie from a signed in account: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/11296#issuecomment-2466538349

Its more of a complete Google Photos replacement than a basic backup/syncing system