A bill advancing through the California legislature would force Big Tech companies to pay news publishers whenever their articles are linked or displayed.
This month, the California Assembly voted to advance the California Journalism Preservation Act (AB 886), a bill that would compel companies like Meta and Google to pay a “journalism usage fee” to benefit news organizations. If AB 886 is signed into law, Meta has already announced that it would remove news from Facebook and Instagram within California. Although the bill’s sponsors tout their efforts as protecting local newsrooms at risk of shutting down, the proposed legislation simply enables the government to reward select firms and industries at the expense of disfavored ones.
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