The Chinese government has deep pockets. They can probably run at a loss for a long time and don't have to worry about it.

Anyone that values their online freedom won't want DeepSeek becoming popular or use it for anything important.

The cheap cost is lulling many people into believing this will be a great future and blinding people to the current reality. I've lived in China for long periods of time. The Internet is heavily censored through the GFW, everything is tracked back to your name and address, and many sites are just blocked completely.

The creator of Shadow Socks was on the run and then disappeared some time ago.

General society is completely tracked with technology far greater than the Flock cameras being protested right now in the US.

What I've described are the things many scream on here the US is becoming, yet don't care at all that it's just normalized in places like China.