Facebook’s parent company META is threatening to remove News articles from the Facebook feeds of users in California if the state passes a law that would require the company to actually pay outlets for their content. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Facebook’s parent company Meta, well, they’re threatening to remove news articles from Facebook feeds of users in California if the state passes a law that would require the company to actually pay outlets for the content. What’s this about? First of all, you got this hair brand. You got really this, the name of the person, Buffy, Buffy Wicks. Yeah. This brilliant Democrat, Buffy Wicks, sponsors this bill that is really, when you drill down to it, it is a corporate, it’s a corporate media relief bill, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: It’s corporate media putting their thumb on social media. And they’re trying to say, look, shows like this, like you and I are doing right now, you know, they might take, they might use some of our material. They might do research and use some of our material. We need to be paid for it. So what happens? So rather than paying corporate media Meta and Instagram and folks like that say, well, we’re just not gonna do it anymore. Right. This is a dangerous, dangerous thing. This is just making corporate media stronger and stronger, even though people are leaving corporate media in droves.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They really are. And this, of course, would have a devastating effect on the independent media because there are, there’s a lot of people, especially on the progressive side, that really only use Facebook as their platform. That is where they publish their videos. You know, they’ve got no presence on YouTube, but a massive following on Facebook to tell people the news.
Mike Papantonio: When’s the last time you’ve even watched television news? I mean, do you really watch MSNBC or CNN?
Farron Cousins: If it’s a debate, I’ll watch whatever channel the debate is on.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, when is the last, do you go searching for news on MSNBC and CNN?
Farron Cousins: Oh God no. No.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, the exodus is incredible. Fox, you gonna watch Fox to figure out what the news of the day is? Really? So what’s happening is people are saying, I’m tired of that, man. I’m just gonna go find out myself by going to sites like this, Ring of Fire or TYT or David Pakman or Sam Seder, or all these sites that are out there where you can really figure out what the hell’s going on. So corporate media’s behind this and this Buffy Wicks, my god, the Buffy Wicks, this genius is making it sound like this is really good for consumers if we can pull this off. Where is it? It’s moving through California legislature.
Farron Cousins: It is right now. It’s moving through the state assembly, and it has a pretty good chance of passing.
Mike Papantonio: God almighty.
Farron Cousins: And, you know, it’s weird because it is being sold to the public as, oh, listen, we’re trying to protect, we’re trying to make sure the media gets their fair share. But Facebook actually has a good argument. They say, listen, we’re not making them post this. They’re posting it on our platform because it benefits them already.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins: They’re getting eyeballs. They’re selling ads based on the number of people looking at it.
Mike Papantonio: Do you realize what’s happening now? Shows like this are actually helping corporate media. If you go to our site, if you go to Ring a Fire, for example, on YouTube, and you watch this segment over to the side, you’ll see lining up other stories you might be interested. MSNBC, CNN, Fox, all they’re doing is piggybacking on our stories even though their stories have nothing to do with the kind of stuff we’re talking about.
