For most use cases in poketto.me, I’m pretty happy with #DeepSeek: it’s cheap, reliable, and the output quality matches any other LLM I’ve tried.

But there’s one big caveat: anything related to Chinese politics can trigger an immediate refusal. Example: Right after the launch of poketto.me, a user tried saving an article about the September 3rd Beijing meeting between Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, et al. ( https://orf.at/stories/3404330/)

Instead of a summary, poketto.me just kept showing the “processing” spinner forever.

After some digging, I found the culprit:

– The DeepSeek API returned an HTTP/400 status code.

– The error message? Invalid Request: Content Exists Risk (their wording, not mine 🤷).

My fix: If DeepSeek refuses a request, I now automatically fall back to Gemini, which I’m already using for YouTube transcripts.

Problem solved—at least for now.