Uh-oh, taxing Meta! Let the threats begin.
The California Journalism Preservation Act would require tech platforms like Facebook and Instagram to give money to local news outlets, a move NPR described as taxing the "advertising profits platforms make from distributing news articles." The majority (about 70 percent) of the money collected would support California newsrooms. The argument is that Meta launched social media platforms, decimated the business models of news outlets, and helped drive the devastating loss of news outlets and newsroom jobs across the country — so they should pay up.
When NPR asked how this act would "force" Meta to remove news, Stone said: "It's pay or remove the news. Our hand is being forced."
While "forced" seems a bit much, it also isn't particularly surprising. According to Axios, Meta has stopped pushing news over the past few years — probably to avoid regulation but also maybe because of its effect on various democracies, I don't know. But Axios reports that those changes had an effect — they lowered traffic to news publishers in the U.S.
And this isn't the first time Meta has been asked to pay and has refused. The entire country of Australia tried to do something similar and Meta responded with the exact same threat. After Australia signed a law that forced social media platforms to pay for news, Meta and Google pulled all news from their platforms and news traffic dropped. After much back-and-forth, Facebook, Google, and Australia reached a deal that did force the tech companies to make a deal with news publishers — and it generated nearly $150 million for news organizations, Bill Grueskin, a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism who has studied the Australian law, told NPR.
It's unclear if that same conclusion will be made in California, as the bill hasn't even been voted on in the state Senate. But if a compromise is made, it might offer a hint as to what a profitable future for newsrooms might look like.
The California Journalism Preservation Act would require tech platforms like Facebook and Instagram to give money to local news outlets, a move NPR described as taxing the "advertising profits platforms make from distributing news articles." The majority (about 70 percent) of the money collected would support California newsrooms. The argument is that Meta launched social media platforms, decimated the business models of news outlets, and helped drive the devastating loss of news outlets and newsroom jobs across the country — so they should pay up.
When NPR asked how this act would "force" Meta to remove news, Stone said: "It's pay or remove the news. Our hand is being forced."
While "forced" seems a bit much, it also isn't particularly surprising. According to Axios, Meta has stopped pushing news over the past few years — probably to avoid regulation but also maybe because of its effect on various democracies, I don't know. But Axios reports that those changes had an effect — they lowered traffic to news publishers in the U.S.
And this isn't the first time Meta has been asked to pay and has refused. The entire country of Australia tried to do something similar and Meta responded with the exact same threat. After Australia signed a law that forced social media platforms to pay for news, Meta and Google pulled all news from their platforms and news traffic dropped. After much back-and-forth, Facebook, Google, and Australia reached a deal that did force the tech companies to make a deal with news publishers — and it generated nearly $150 million for news organizations, Bill Grueskin, a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism who has studied the Australian law, told NPR.
It's unclear if that same conclusion will be made in California, as the bill hasn't even been voted on in the state Senate. But if a compromise is made, it might offer a hint as to what a profitable future for newsrooms might look like.
