Fb proprietor Meta threatens to drag information content material in California if invoice to pay publishers passes

By Samantha Delouya | CNN

Meta, the mum or dad firm of Fb and Instagram, threatened to take away information from its social media websites in California if the state passes a invoice requiring massive tech firms to pay information retailers for his or her content material.

In an announcement posted on Twitter, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, referred to as California’s Journalism Preservation Act “a slush fund that primarily advantages massive, out-of-state media firms beneath the guise of aiding California publishers.”

“The invoice fails to acknowledge that publishers and broadcasters put their content material on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s native information trade came to visit 15 years in the past, nicely earlier than Fb was broadly used,” Stone stated.

The invoice, sponsored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, requires digital firms reminiscent of Google and Fb to pay native information publishers a “journalism utilization price” each time their information content material is used or posted on these platforms. The invoice additionally requires information publishers to speculate 70% of utilization price earnings into journalism jobs.

“This menace from Meta is a scare tactic that they’ve tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in each nation that’s tried this,” Wicks stated in an announcement. “It’s egregious that one of many wealthiest firms on the earth would reasonably silence journalists than face regulation.”