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Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta said it will stop providing news articles on their platforms for users in California if they are required to pay news outlets a fee under a journalism proposal in the state legislature.
Democratic lawmakers introduced the "California Journalism Preservation Act" in March. It would require large online platforms like Facebook and Google to pay a usage fee to eligible news publishers every month taken from the ad revenue they generate on the platform. News outlets would also be required to spend 70% of that fee on funding journalist and staff salaries and hiring.
Meta communications director Andy Stone said on Wednesday they would be "forced" to pull news from their platforms if the bill passes.
META VOWS TO BOYCOTT US NEWS OUTLETS ON FACEBOOK IF DEM-SPONSORED AD REVENUE BILL IS SIGNED INTO LAW
Messenger and Facebook app logos are displayed on a mobile phone screen for illustration photo. Krakow, Poland on January 23, 2023. ((Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images))
"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," Stone said in a statement posted to Twitter.
"The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves," Stone continued. Meta argued the bill benefits larger out-of-state publishers rather than local outlets.
The spokesman claimed lawmakers in the state were putting news outlets' priorities above their constituents.
Progressive Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D), who introduced the bill, argued the legislation would help struggling local news outlets.
"These dominant digital ad companies are enriching their own platforms with local news content without adequately compensating the originators. It’s time they start paying market value for the journalism they are aggregating at no cost from local media," Wicks said while introducing the bill.
Meta threatened to pull news from California if a journalism act passes. (Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Wicks slammed Meta's threat on Wednesday as a "scare tactic."
"This threat from Meta is a scare tactic that they’ve tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in every country that’s attempted this. It is egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation," she tweeted.
Meta also objected last December to a similar bill in Congress, which would give media outlets and publishers "greater power" to acquire a larger share of the platform’s ad revenue.
That bill was introduced in 2021 and has bipartisan support. Media companies that supported the bill claimed that Meta generates huge sums of money from news articles shared on the platform," while many outlets, especially local news, have "struggled during the pandemic," the BBC reported.
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Fox News' Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
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