[lazyier]

In practice it will be a arbitrary weapon used by politicians in the Chinese regime to club companies that don't play ball over the head with.

It's all value-based judgements. Entirely subjective laws. What is "disinformation", "manipulate user accounts", or "convenient option"?

The answer to all those things "Whatever the hell the regime feels like".

Meaning that if you want to avoid being accused of not providing a "convenient-enough option to turn off the algorithmic recommendation service" then you have to keep the Chinese politicians happy with you and your company. Essentially whether or not you are breaking the law depends on their perception/how pleased they are of what you are doing.

Keep in mind that we are dealing with a totalitarian regime. Their idea of things like "false news" is going to be any history that does not align with their communist agenda. Such as covid probably originated from a research facility in Wuhan, that Mao's rise to power involved slaughtering peasants, or that something untoward happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

This isn't to "protect users" it's to provide yet another legislative club they can use to force western corporations to give the government ever increasing concessions.

[helen___keller]

I half agree. The CCP already has a lot of tools to wield power over any company that doesn’t play ball. This law will become part of that tool kit, but not much different from the status quo in that regard.

The real change here is making it easier to enact soft censorship. If you want less people talking about a topic, right now the primary tool is outright censorship by the state. I think what the CCP wants is to let people post on a subject, but nobody sees your post, with a net effect that the subject falls out of public discourse without being outright censored.