A proposed law requiring internet giants to pay for news stories moved forward in California on Friday, despite Facebook owner Meta threatening to pull news from its platform if it passes.
A proposed law requiring internet giants to pay for news stories moved forward in California on Friday, despite Facebook owner Meta threatening to pull news from its platform if it passes.
The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which cleared the state assembly on Thursday and was in the hands of the state senate, would mandate that large online platforms pay a monthly “journalism usage fee” to news providers whose work appears on their services.
The bill is designed to support local news organizations, which have been decimated in recent years as ad revenue bled away to Google and Facebook, both advertising behemoths.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone on Friday told AFP that if the bill becomes law, Meta “will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies.”
The bill has to make its way through the state senate and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom to become law.
