3 ms·

I'd recommend reading the actual bill if you want to see how (apparently) nuts it is. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=2023

I'd recommend reading the actual bill if you want to see how (apparently) nuts it is. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB886 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... From my reading of the preamble: 1) A 'digital journalism provider' (DJP, e.g. a newspaper) submits a notice to the platform (e.g meta) each month 2) The platform must then remit to the provider some fraction of all its advertising revenue. 3) The platform is forbidden from 'retaliating' (???) again the DJP by (for example) not linking to it in the future That third part cant possibly be constitutional.

BitwiseFool 3y ago
>"That third part cant possibly be constitutional." The Californian legislative mindset appears to be based on passing bold and far reaching laws and then letting the courts determine constitutionality. They don't seem to have reservations about their own authority.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  Wait until some far-alt-right starts pushing some conspiracy theory or outright racist content. "This holocaust denial was brought to you by the California Legislature that prohibits social media platforms from deciding to ban this content".
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    "This section does not prohibit a covered platform from, and does not impose liability on a covered platform for, enforcing its terms of service against an eligible journalism provider."
    - nullc 3y ago
      "Our TOS prohibits charging for inbound links." Solved.
      - jasonlotito 3y ago
        How does that solve the comment I was replying to? The concern that content the provider wouldn't want on their site would have to display it? Your comment doesn't "solve" anything. Did you reply to the right comment?
        hellojesus 3y ago
        They were saying that if TOS supercedes this law, then you could get around the de-linking retaliation by updating your TOS to forbid charging for link sharing. It was an extension of your statement applied back onto the law, not a rebuttle against your claim that content would no longer be moderated-able.
        nullc 3y ago
        Exactly. To the extent that the TOS carveout protects sites free speech it also moots the law's anti-"retaliation" provision. We need to fire state legislators that promote plainly unconstitutional laws, it's both professionally incompetent and a violation of their oath of office ( https://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/dgs/fmc/pdf/std688.pdf https://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/dgs/fmc/pdf/std688.pdf ). But hey, if they're going to advance unconstitutional laws it's at least polite that they're so incompetently drafted that they're self mooting.
- prpl 3y ago
  This is not limited to California, it happens in virtually every state with majority rule, left or right.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > This is not limited to California, it happens in virtually every state with majority rule, left or right. Did you mean majority rule or did you actually mean one-party rule? Because California is a one-party rule state, and the mindset you're talking about seems to better fit for the situation where the politicians are unreasonably secure in their jobs/power.
    - asveikau 3y ago
      I feel like you guys must not follow politics. Bipartisanship is pretty much dead everywhere. Majority rule is one party rule, even for very slim majorities. Nobody crosses the aisle anymore. When we have a bicameral party split, or executive split with legislature, as we currently see federally on both counts, very little gets done.
    - prpl 3y ago
      Both probably. I’ve lived in Utah and California (among other states) and I would characterize both as having the majority of their politicians unreasonably secure in their jobs and power. In Utah, most of the politicians were more at risk of losing your seat due to a primary challenge from someone further right than you than general election. In California they have at least fixed that a bit with open primaries, so at least the moderate people can make it to the general election. In both states, at least, the governors tend to be slightly more moderate than the rest of the politicians. It is possibly true that the unreasonably secure don’t make up more than 50% of the votes, I’m not sure.
    - r00fus 3y ago
      LOL, the CA Democratic Party is by no means a monolith. There are leftist and centrists, and some good bills die because the centrists + GOP have enough votes to kill them.
falcolas 3y ago
The part that gets me is that just linking to a news source is enough to trigger the payments. If the trigger was displaying content from the news source's articles, that would be one thing. But just linking to a news source? That's a bit too far. 3273.63. (a) (1) "For each month, a covered platform shall track and record ... the total number of the covered platform’s internet websites that link to ..."
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  It's not _just_ linking. You can still "just link." You'd have to link AND display the eligible content. "..., display, or present that eligible digital journalism provider’s news articles, works of journalism, or other content, or portions thereof, and that the covered platform has displayed or presented to California residents." The key here being the final piece, which is part of it. That the platform links to and displays the eligible work (news articles, works of journalism, or other content, or portions thereof).
  - falcolas 3y ago
    That's not how I read it. The "and" is attaching a caveat that the (link|headline|content) has been shown to someone from California; it's restricting the scope of the law to California. In other words, they type of content is collected using "or", and the scope restriction is the "and".
- onetimeusename 3y ago
  So in theory, one could start a bogus spam news org, post links to facebook or wherever, and then demand money? Maybe you could get chatGPT to create some plausible sounding news based on other news sources. Then sit back and collect money for doing almost no real work?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - falcolas 3y ago
    I'd hope it would be harder than that, but... probably not much.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Legal or not, it's the only way for such a law to have any effect. Something similar happened over here in Europe (I believe it was in Germany?) where news media were allowed to demand payment from Google for being listed in their news sections/search results. Google obviously decided to stop listing them, because there are plenty of news media that don't demand payment. As a result, the flow of visitors collapsed and the news media was very happy to go back to the way things were before. I think forcing companies to pay for something and then taking away any control they have over that entire market sets a bad precedent. I don't know a better solution, but if this sticks we'll see other ways in which companies can be drained for money from basic internet services as well, only getting worse over time. I imagine stock photo hosts demanding payment for memes posted on social media are waiting next in line. Imagine having to pay these platforms for your users' memes without being allowed to filter out the offending material. Stock photo companies could even start to artifically hype meme formats to get a bigger cut!
narrator 3y ago
The third part sounds like compelled speech which isn't constitutional.
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  IANAL, but it sounds like they're allowed to avoid linking to things, just not punitively. You'd have to sue them to find out whether it's punitive, but that's what discovery is for.
- asveikau 3y ago
  I like how everybody's suddenly a constitutional expert here. I'm skimming legislature.ca.gov, I can't seem to find the definition of "covered platform", but speaking charitably, I'm guessing they basically narrowly defined a social media recommendation algorithm and are trying to regulate what it can do. Saying an algorithm can't penalize on X criteria doesn't seem like compelled speech to me.
breakingrules 3y ago
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BitwiseFool 3y ago

>"That third part cant possibly be constitutional." The Californian legislative mindset appears to be based on passing bold and far reaching laws and then letting the courts determine constitutionality. They don't seem to have reservations about their own authority.

908B64B197 3y ago
Wait until some far-alt-right starts pushing some conspiracy theory or outright racist content. "This holocaust denial was brought to you by the California Legislature that prohibits social media platforms from deciding to ban this content".
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  "This section does not prohibit a covered platform from, and does not impose liability on a covered platform for, enforcing its terms of service against an eligible journalism provider."
  - nullc 3y ago
    "Our TOS prohibits charging for inbound links." Solved.
    - jasonlotito 3y ago
      How does that solve the comment I was replying to? The concern that content the provider wouldn't want on their site would have to display it? Your comment doesn't "solve" anything. Did you reply to the right comment?
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        They were saying that if TOS supercedes this law, then you could get around the de-linking retaliation by updating your TOS to forbid charging for link sharing. It was an extension of your statement applied back onto the law, not a rebuttle against your claim that content would no longer be moderated-able.
        nullc 3y ago
        Exactly. To the extent that the TOS carveout protects sites free speech it also moots the law's anti-"retaliation" provision. We need to fire state legislators that promote plainly unconstitutional laws, it's both professionally incompetent and a violation of their oath of office ( https://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/dgs/fmc/pdf/std688.pdf https://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/dgs/fmc/pdf/std688.pdf ). But hey, if they're going to advance unconstitutional laws it's at least polite that they're so incompetently drafted that they're self mooting.
prpl 3y ago
This is not limited to California, it happens in virtually every state with majority rule, left or right.
- tivert 3y ago
  > This is not limited to California, it happens in virtually every state with majority rule, left or right. Did you mean majority rule or did you actually mean one-party rule? Because California is a one-party rule state, and the mindset you're talking about seems to better fit for the situation where the politicians are unreasonably secure in their jobs/power.
  - asveikau 3y ago
    I feel like you guys must not follow politics. Bipartisanship is pretty much dead everywhere. Majority rule is one party rule, even for very slim majorities. Nobody crosses the aisle anymore. When we have a bicameral party split, or executive split with legislature, as we currently see federally on both counts, very little gets done.
  - prpl 3y ago
    Both probably. I’ve lived in Utah and California (among other states) and I would characterize both as having the majority of their politicians unreasonably secure in their jobs and power. In Utah, most of the politicians were more at risk of losing your seat due to a primary challenge from someone further right than you than general election. In California they have at least fixed that a bit with open primaries, so at least the moderate people can make it to the general election. In both states, at least, the governors tend to be slightly more moderate than the rest of the politicians. It is possibly true that the unreasonably secure don’t make up more than 50% of the votes, I’m not sure.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    LOL, the CA Democratic Party is by no means a monolith. There are leftist and centrists, and some good bills die because the centrists + GOP have enough votes to kill them.

falcolas 3y ago

The part that gets me is that just linking to a news source is enough to trigger the payments. If the trigger was displaying content from the news source's articles, that would be one thing. But just linking to a news source? That's a bit too far. 3273.63. (a) (1) "For each month, a covered platform shall track and record ... the total number of the covered platform’s internet websites that link to ..."

jasonlotito 3y ago
It's not _just_ linking. You can still "just link." You'd have to link AND display the eligible content. "..., display, or present that eligible digital journalism provider’s news articles, works of journalism, or other content, or portions thereof, and that the covered platform has displayed or presented to California residents." The key here being the final piece, which is part of it. That the platform links to and displays the eligible work (news articles, works of journalism, or other content, or portions thereof).
- falcolas 3y ago
  That's not how I read it. The "and" is attaching a caveat that the (link|headline|content) has been shown to someone from California; it's restricting the scope of the law to California. In other words, they type of content is collected using "or", and the scope restriction is the "and".
onetimeusename 3y ago
So in theory, one could start a bogus spam news org, post links to facebook or wherever, and then demand money? Maybe you could get chatGPT to create some plausible sounding news based on other news sources. Then sit back and collect money for doing almost no real work?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- falcolas 3y ago
  I'd hope it would be harder than that, but... probably not much.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Legal or not, it's the only way for such a law to have any effect. Something similar happened over here in Europe (I believe it was in Germany?) where news media were allowed to demand payment from Google for being listed in their news sections/search results. Google obviously decided to stop listing them, because there are plenty of news media that don't demand payment. As a result, the flow of visitors collapsed and the news media was very happy to go back to the way things were before. I think forcing companies to pay for something and then taking away any control they have over that entire market sets a bad precedent. I don't know a better solution, but if this sticks we'll see other ways in which companies can be drained for money from basic internet services as well, only getting worse over time. I imagine stock photo hosts demanding payment for memes posted on social media are waiting next in line. Imagine having to pay these platforms for your users' memes without being allowed to filter out the offending material. Stock photo companies could even start to artifically hype meme formats to get a bigger cut!

narrator 3y ago

The third part sounds like compelled speech which isn't constitutional.

KerrAvon 3y ago
IANAL, but it sounds like they're allowed to avoid linking to things, just not punitively. You'd have to sue them to find out whether it's punitive, but that's what discovery is for.
asveikau 3y ago
I like how everybody's suddenly a constitutional expert here. I'm skimming legislature.ca.gov, I can't seem to find the definition of "covered platform", but speaking charitably, I'm guessing they basically narrowly defined a social media recommendation algorithm and are trying to regulate what it can do. Saying an algorithm can't penalize on X criteria doesn't seem like compelled speech to me.

breakingrules 3y ago

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