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Meta Threatens to Deplatform News Outlets

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is threatening to deplatform news outlets if the California Journalism Preservation Act, or AB 886, is signed into law.

Written by California Democrat Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, the bill would require that social media companies pay a monthly “journalism usage fee” based on the platform’s monthly ad revenue.

The fee amount would be determined by an arbitration process, The Sacramento Bee reported, with the money going into a fund for payments to the companies that created the content.

Under the proposed law, media companies would be mandated to spend a minimum of 70% of that money on journalists and other staff.

The rise of social media giants has hollowed out many local news outlets as they’ve hemorrhaged advertising revenue and shed staff, proponents of the measure say. The resulting “news deserts” have weakened the civic fabric in many communities.

Meta pointed out that news publishers voluntarily chose to push their content on social media and said the consolidation of California’s local news industry is a phenomenon that was occurring before the widespread use of Facebook.

The company also said that news makes up less than 3% of most users’ Facebook feeds.

“If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we 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 under the guise of aiding California publishers,” Meta said in a statement shared with the Bee Wednesday morning.

Wicks took to Twitter Wednesday to respond to Meta’s announcement, saying the company has tried “unsuccessfully” to use the “scare tactic” before.

“It is egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation,” she wrote.

Quantifying a Big Tech revolt against the bill, Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech industry policy coalition, released an analysis last month that showed that national media outlets it labeled “disinformation giants,” such as Fox News, the New York Post and Newsmax, would benefit from AB 886 more than local and ethnic outlets.

Wicks disputed the policy coalition’s findings.

“The very people that they’re purporting to care about here … are all at the table either supporting the bill or in conversations with me,” Wicks previously told the Bee.

Co-sponsored by the California News Publishers Association, AB 886 has received widespread support from state media outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Blade.

It has also picked up support from some of the largest journalism unions in California, including Media Guild of the West and Pacific Media Workers Guild.

In a joint letter, the two unions called Meta and Google “powerful landlords overseeing an ever-expanding slum of low-quality information, happy to collect advertising rents from struggling tenants while avoiding paying for upkeep.”

According to the Bee, the bill has received unanimous, bipartisan support in both committees where it has been heard and heads to the Assembly floor on Thursday.


© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.





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