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    Brian Merchant: California and Canada absolutely must call Google’s and Facebook’s bluff on news

    by Brian Merchant, Los Angeles Times Jul 05, 2023 6 minutes
    Rupert Murdoch attends the a party at on Feb. 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.

    In June, Canada passed a law that will require major tech platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay a small fee when they host news on their platforms, to compensate the journalistic outlets that produced it. A similar bill recently cleared crucial hurdles in California and now has a serious chance at becoming law too.

    In response, Google and Facebook say they will have no choice but to ban news altogether from their services in those markets when and if these laws go into effect.

    California and Canada must absolutely not give in to the tech giants’ tantrum. This is a bluff, and not a particularly convincing one. For the sake of the beleaguered news industries in both places (yes, including this media outlet), the Canadian and Californian governments must absolutely call it.

    For assurance, we should look to Australia, where a like-minded bill went into law in 2021, even after Google and Facebook made the same exact threats. Facebook did initially

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