> Chinese apps’ UX is trash

It is trash because you're thinking with the mind of a Westerner. These apps are created and optimized for Chinese audiences, and they interact in a different way.

They definitely do some things better.

Taobao's shop by image is pretty game changing. Whether or not they were the first to do it, they seem to be the most successful iteration of it.

I feel like Chinese UX flows tend to be more clunky than Western ones but I have a certain liking for high information density apps, and find uncluttered screens sometimes a bit annoying and overly patronising.

I thought bullet chat on Bilibili was a very fun concept that probably doesn't translate quite as well to western media but YouTube has come up with a nifty half way by flashing comments with timestamps under the video

Yeah, totally fair. I guess it’s a very subjective opinion, given I grew up in the west, and was introduced to the iPhone era gradually. Like i went through Internet of 90s, desktop apps, old laptops, PCs and etc., and then eventually landing on daily iPhone usage. I can see how it might be a bit different if you went from most using nothing to Android/iPhone society.

That being said, they still use apps like Chrome, Safari, all the other common apps like ours. So they have both UXs available for them, I guess.

> To my understanding, most people, even in tech, disregard and look down on Chinese software

Historically, if Chinese software has been installed on your computer, it's been malware.

I have not said that Deepseek models are bad. Quite the opposite. I'm impressed by them. I have just questiened that they are just some chinese startup.

Yes, they also had very bad hardware in the past. That does not say anything to their current level of exports.

No, they absolutely export malware still. All of DJI's apps need to be sideloaded on android because the obfuscated data collection they do is not allowed in Play Store apps[0]. TikTok uses an obfuscated VM to do user tracking[1]. Then there's the malware that the US government has to routinely delete from compromised computers [2][3]

Chinese software deserves the reputation it has.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/chine...

[1] https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/fbi-forces-chine...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/chinese-malware-rem...

Fair points. I guess, market doesn’t care about software being malware, given both of your examples are the leading products in the world within their own market segments.

Like there are 1.4B people in China, obviously there are bad actors. Writing off an average software as a malware ridden crap is kinda weird. And again, the main users of Chinese software are… mainland Chinese. Whether we like it or not, they have very impressive track record of making it run and scale to humongous users.

Anyways, I think I deviated far from my point and sound like a general China-shill.

tech people are notorious for being ignorant assholes about anything outside of their field of expertise. There are multiple very reputable research showing smart people to be more susceptible to propaganda and brainwashing.