Bill 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 publ…
Newsrooms across the country have withered while the stories they produce at great cost enrich big technology companies that pay nothing for sharing them on their platforms. Despite bipartisan support, attempts to make those companies share ad dollars with news publishers have sputtered in Congress.
According the California News Publishers Association, which is sponsoring Wicks’ bill, AB 886, and to which the Bay Area News Group belongs, 52% of California residents get their news through Facebook and 49% from Google. 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.
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. Similar laws have been introduced overseas in Spain and Australia where they are known as “link taxes.” Wicks’ California bill takes a different approach. Since states cannot carve out exemptions to federal antitrust law, Wicks’ bill 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.
What the formula would be for compensating news publishers, Wicks said, is “what we’ll have to figure out through the policy process.”
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