Since states cannot carve out exemptions to federal antitrust law, AB 886 would require tech platforms to directly compensate publishers with a “journalism usage fee” based on the amount of advertising revenue the platform receives from displaying a publication’s content. The California bill takes a different approach. The ACLU argued that the tech companies could potentially be compelled to share material on their sites that violate their standards. Similar laws have been introduced overseas in Spain and Australia where they are known as “link taxes.”īut bipartisan support – a rarity in today’s politically divisive moment – wasn’t enough to overcome concerns not just from Google and Facebook, but from groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Cato Institute.Ĭritics argued the federal bill would prop up legacy media companies while discouraging competition from smaller, more innovative news outlets. The federal bill would have waived antitrust restrictions so news publishers could join in negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with platform content providers such as Facebook and Google.

RELATED: Facebook threatens to remove all news content if bill forcing payments to local media outlets passes Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican. Her bill follows the December collapse of a similar Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in Congress, a bill carried by U.S. Wicks’ bill notes that newspaper advertising has fallen 66%, and newsroom staffing has shrunk 44% over the past 10 years. Those two Silicon Valley companies – divisions of Meta Platforms and Alphabet Inc., respectively – gobble 60% of all digital ad dollars thanks to their ability to collect consumer data. And when you have an ecosystem where there’s not a level playing field and newspapers are shutting down left and right, that concerns me from a democracy standpoint.”Īccording to the California News Publishers Association, which is sponsoring Assembly Bill 886, and to which the Southern California News Group belongs, 52% of California residents get their news through Facebook and 49% from Google. “Our constitutional founders understood the importance of a free press. “California has lost more than 100 newspapers in the last decade,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, who plans to introduce the California Journalism Protection Act in the coming week.

Google pay bill