A bipartisan bill to make Google and Facebook pay news companies whose stories appear on their platforms to help the struggling media industry faced its first test in the state Senate Tuesday evening when it passed 9-2 out of the Judiciary Committee.
The bill, AB 886, co-authored by assembly members Bill Essayli, a Riverside Republican, and Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, In addition to Google and Facebook, opponents include the ACLU of California, the California Taxpayers Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and some online news organizations, including CalMatters.
Chamber of Progress, a group backed by Google, Facebook and other large technology companies, cited Canada as an example of potential fallout from the bill, after many publishers north of the border lost traffic when Meta, faced with such a law, stopped carrying news on Canadian Facebook. Small outlets have been hit hardest, according to the group.
Damage to local outlets from “strip mining” by companies like Google parent Alphabet, worth $2.3 trillion in the stock market, and Facebook parent Meta, worth $1.3 trillion, hits traditional news companies, smaller non-profit outlets, and innovative digital-media startups, said Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West.