California News:
Google announced on Friday that they would start blocking California-based news article links for a limited number of users in protest of a bill advancing in the Assembly that, if passed, would require big tech companies to pay a fee to news outlets for using or posting articles and other local news content.
Assembly Bill 886, authored by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), would specifically have digital advertising companies, such as Google or Facebook, pay for content they use from media outlets. The bill, also known as the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), would pay a “journalism usage fee” to media outlet owners each time local news articles are used by the companies that also sell advertising along with it. Publishers would receive the funds and would then need to invest at least 70% back into funding journalism jobs, such as paying journalists or creating new journalism positions.
Introduced early least year, AB 886 quickly gained support in Sacramento with many agreeing with Wicks over compensating news outlets for having articles used online given the significant decline of local newspaper outlets in California in the past decade, largely attributed to a huge loss of print advertising. As newspaper advertising revenues have sunk a total of 66% more, with media outlet employees decreasing 44%, lawmakers voted for the bill to protect media outlets in the changing market, as it is projected that regular online advertising not make up for the loss of print advertising for the foreseeable future.
Google, Meta, and other tech companies opposed AB 886 heavily, with Meta even coming out and saying that should the bill imposing journalism usage fees pass, they would remove all news content from California on their sites. That got the attention of lawmakers. While the bill did pass the Assembly 55-6 with 19 abstentions in the House in Jun 2023, it didn’t move much further, with all the rest of their hearings in the Senate being canceled for the year.
However, with the bill threatening to come back this year, Google announced on Friday that they would be removing links to California news websites to measure the impact of the potential legislation within a small number of Californian users for a short period of time. Google argued their actions in a statement on Friday, saying that the CJPA would leave significant changes on Google and what they could offer Californian users, as well as have some of the money go to larger companies who operate news websites under a “ghost paper” model.
Google’s Announcement
“A pending bill in the California state legislature, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), would create a “link tax” that would require Google to pay for simply connecting Californians to news articles,” said Google in a statement on Friday. “We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism. If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.
“By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. CJPA would up-end that model. It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content. CJPA would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers’ access to a diverse local media ecosystem.”
“As we’ve shared when other countries have considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by CJPA would be unworkable. If enacted, CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept. To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users. The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience. Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”
While Google did offer some alternatives, like focusing on different ways that users get their news, nothing was made clear. In addition, Google’s stance on purposefully blocking sites led to much criticism that Google would be killing local and community news outlets through their actions, and that they had been just leveraging advertising dollars against that.
As of Friday afternoon, Wicks and other supporters had yet to respond to Google’s decision. However, many smaller outlets, as well as media experts have actually sided with Google. While they said that Google shouldn’t be blocking California media sites, they said that the bill itself would only benefit larger outlets while ignoring smaller and more local outlets, the latter of which that are the most at-risk in California.
“Google went a little too far in actually blocking some news links from some users, but they weren’t wrong in that the bill has problems,” explained online advertising consultant Darren Adams to the Globe. “Only the largest outlets would benefit from the bill. Smaller and independent outlets want to be covered more, but the bill just would not give them a fair slice of that pie, AB 886 would largely kill local news. Googles actions will also harm outlets, but this is short term. The sad thing is that smaller outlets are caught in the middle of all this. They want increased revenue, but also don’t want to be squeezed out of search results. They get a lot of clicks through Google searches and from social media links. And all of this is just so overwhelming.”
As of Friday afternoon, Google has yet to give any exact figures on how many users in California are to be affected.
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Author: Evan Symon
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