California law would make tech giants pay for news

San Francisco: A proposed law requiring internet giants to pay for news stories moved forward in California on Friday, despite Facebook owner Meta threatening to pull news from its platform if it passes.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which cleared the state assembly on Thursday and was in the hands of the state senate, would mandate that large online platforms pay a monthly “journalism usage fee” to news providers whose work appears on their services.

The bill is designed to support local news organizations, which have been decimated in recent years as ad revenue bled away to Google and Facebook, both advertising behemoths.