California Lawmaker Resumes Effort to Make Big Tech Pay for News

California lawmakers will again attempt this year to make Big Tech platforms, notably Google and Meta, pay for news content after being stymied in 2023.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (A.B. 886), authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D), had already passed the Assembly when Wicks pressed pause last July to allow for more feedback and adjustments.

Now, Wicks said in an interview she and her colleagues will incorporate those critiques into a revised measure this year.

Wicks said she doesn’t expect new language until the summer when she will renew her push. Her measure will face opposition from tech giants like Meta Platforms Inc., which has threatened to block news in California, like it did in Canada.

Meta’s stance hasn’t deterred Wicks. Meta won’t be carved out of the measure. “We’ll see what they decide to do. They’re currently still in the bill. So it’ll be their decision on if they want to provide news or not on their platform,” Wicks said on Meta. “We’ll just take it from there.”

Potential Changes

Wicks said she’ll address a number of key points with the updated version. One key debate revolves around which news organizations would primarily benefit from the advertising revenue, which could be in the billions, that tech platforms would be sharing.

Tech oppponents argue the measure would give more money to out-of-state companies that can get huge amounts of clicks, like Fox News, over smaller local outlets. In response, Wicks wants to tailor the measure so it focuses more on California-based outlets with a significant footprint in the state, like the Los Angeles Times.

Another common complaint is that ethnic media would be left out. Wicks said she’s looking at creating a “floor” for publications of a certain size so that there’s always funding for more niche publications.

The biggest unresolved issue is how to determine the value of the payments to news organizations. The act as written would leave the final determination to a mandatory arbitrator based on the number of news impressions seen by viewers. That method was a major reason the bill was held back last year.

“My biggest concern is the enforcement mechanism. Who’s going to enforce it, how’s it going to be enforced, and what’s the penalty?” said state Sen. Tom Umberg (D), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee currently overseeing the bill. “I didn’t think that that had been worked out well enough to be able to be, in a sense, practical.”

Wicks said she’s eyeing Canada’s Online News Act as a potential model, where tech platforms can exempt themselves from the arbitration process if they get into voluntary agreements with news businesses. Umberg said government support or other models are not off the table.

Finally, there will be more transparency measures as well as provisions to ensure funds go to human journalists and not AI-powered systems, Wicks added.

Who’s at Fault?

Tech groups maintain their opposition. At a December hearing, a representative for Google said it wasn’t fair to force the company to compensate for the journalism industry’s problems, pointing to its existing programs that already help news outlets out, such as it’s billion-dollar partnership with news publishers.

“Google drives massive amounts of valuable traffic to publishers at no cost,” said Richard Gingras, vice president of news at Google. “The disruption of the newspaper business model was the result of the competitive, dynamic nature of the internet. A link tax will be counterproductive, making it difficult for users to find diverse sources of news.”

News publishers and advocates at the hearing pushed back, noting the decline in newspaper revenue parallels with the rise in search and ad revenue of the tech giants.

Meta has been more forceful in its opposition, issuing its threat to block news for Californians. The social media giant based in Menlo Park didn’t send a representative to the hearing despite being invited, according to Umberg’s office.

Wicks said Meta hasn’t engaged with her on the bill recently, though she hopes there will be some communication later this year.

Meta carried through with its threat to block news in Canada when the country’s law went into effect last month. Observers point out that Meta has indicated it wants to pull out of the news space in general. Still, any potential blockage weighs on the minds of California lawmakers, including Umberg.

Ultimately, though, Wicks and Umberg each said they’re determined to push for passage of a revised measure.

“It’s a problem that impacts our democracy fundamentally,” said Wicks. “My colleagues, the majority of them, have supported this solution and I am optimistic that they will continue to do so.”