the problem this law solves is that in tiktok's case the "they" who has the power to manufacture consent is the PRC

They don't need to, people share and watch the content voluntarily because it has novel value.

"Why wasn't I told this before?" Is a common sentiment in those videos.

often the reason is because it wasn’t true or they were told and weren’t listening!

what “false flag” war has the US engaged in? would love a single legit example of a false flag, closest i can think of is gulf of tonkin which was quite some time ago and not actually a false flag.

i hate that nationalism is becoming another hyper-polarized topic - now we get people who are ridiculously jingoistic/anti-cosmopolitan and other people who reject fully the notion that a government’s first responsibility is to its own citizens. both are radical views that are no way to govern a well-functioning republic.

Remember when we overthrew Saddam’s government because Iraq had WMDs?

that’s not what a false flag is unless you’re saying the US secretly gassed the Kurds and blamed it on Iraq

Well they didn’t don Iraqi uniforms and take photos smiling by vx agent drums or anything I guess. But they alleged as much and got the desired response as if they did. By definition of a false flag operation, you wouldn’t expect to hear of many historical cases. But one wonders cases such as the CIA training Taliban to fight the soviet union. Was this considered a false flag? Training and arming troops and sending them to fight without your flag on their sleeve? Does it matter if they went through boot camp on parris island or in a valley in Afghanistan for this definition? Do we care more about semantical correctness here or the outcomes?

yes i think the taliban in the 90s could be a false flag, although it wasn’t used in a way to justify US intervention