California Poised to Battle Google and Facebook Over ‘Journalism Usage Fees’

NetChoice, an industry organization that counts Meta and Google as members, told Gizmodo the California proposal could incentivize large tech companies to abstain from sharing news on their platforms altogether.

“This is a ‘link tax’ that will actually result in people seeing less news from legacy newspapers,” NetChoice Vice President & General Counsel Carl Szabo told Gizmodo. “If websites are charged every time we share a link, websites just won’t let us share links to stories of interest.”