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Meta Threatens to Yank News From Its California Platforms Over Bill

The warning came in response to a state bill that would require platforms to pay newsrooms for distributing their work.

Meta on Wednesday issued a warning that it would ban news from Facebook and Instagram in California if state lawmakers pass legislation requiring such platforms to pay journalists. A spokesperson for the social media giant said that if California passes its Journalism Preservation Act, which requires a percentage of ad revenue be diverted as a “journalism usage fee” to publishers, it would “be forced” to pull news links off its platforms. “The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone tweeted. Under the terms of the bill, news publishers would be required to spend 70 percent of profits from such fees on journalism personnel. “It is egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation,” California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks (D) wrote on Twitter, calling the threat a “scare tactic.”