Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—has threatened to pull down news content from its social media apps in California in protest against the state’s new proposed bill that requires big tech companies to pay news outlets for showcasing their content.
The Journalism Preservation Act requires digital companies such as Google and Facebook to pay local news publishers a “journalism usage fee” whenever their news content is used or posted on those platforms.
The bill, which is sponsored by a Democrat assembly member from Oakland, Buffy Wicks, also requires news publishers to invest 70 per cent of usage fee profits into journalism jobs.
The move was slammed by Meta’s communications director Andy Stone who called the bill “a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers.”
“The bill fails to recognise that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” Stone said on Twitter on Wednesday.
“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,” he added.
Lawmaker condemns Meta’s threat
Responding to the remarks, Wicks in a statement condemned Meta for using a “scare tactic” in an attempt to “silence journalists”.
“This threat from Meta is a scare tactic that they’ve tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in every country that’s attempted this,” Wicks said in a statement, according to CNN.
“It’s egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation.”
A spokesperson for Wicks said that the bill is due for a vote in the California State Assembly on Thursday.
Evokes mixed response
The bill has garnered mixed responses among the media fraternity in California.
While the Media Guild of the West and Pacific Media Workers Guild have praised the bill, Free Press Action, a non-profit media advocacy organisation, has criticised it.
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”.
(With inputs from agencies)
