Google agreed to pay millions for California news; journalists call it a bad deal

This under the table deal should say "Google will soon give California peanuts to help pay for local journalism jobs".

Google forced the lawmakers to abandon the bill to actually pay the appropriate amounts to the media.

It's a start and sets a precedent for the state to make similar demands of Yahoo, Fakebook, X and other social media platforms that run news for free.

tricky issue. digital scraping followed by minimal writing style changes will only get worse with ai.

i don’t know what the answer is.

Recently the Democrat Party held a national convention touting they are for the people. Apparently, the message did not reach California Democrats.

Recently the Democrat Party held a national convention touting they are for the people. Apparently, the message did not reach California Democrats.

Your comment makes no sense. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Meta, etc basically steal news content normal subscribers would have to pay for and post it on their social media sites for free. These same news outlets are being starved for ad revenue and subscriptions exactly because everybody knows they can get the exact same news articles for free on Google, Yahoo, Meta and the like. Meanwhile newspapers are closing all across the nation leaving smaller cities and towns with no local news sources and nobody reporting on local events.

As James Madison said "'A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both." This is what motivates the California Legislature, and their counterparts in Australia and Canada to force the social media giants to pay for the news articles they stream on their sites.