California: Meta Warns it will remove news from Facebook & Instagram in California rather than pay into slush fund

We’ve written a few times about California’s “Journalism Protection Act” (CJPA) from state Rep. Buffy Wicks, and many times about the terrible concept of such link taxes. Unfortunately, it looks like California’s bill is moving forward, with buy-in from the big media orgs and their journalists that will get the free pay offs from such an unconstitutional link tax.
In response, Meta has now announced (as it has done elsewhere) that if California passes the CJPA it will simply stop allowing links to news media in California. From a statement posted on Twitter by Meta’s Comms boss Andy Stone:

If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers. The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used. It is disappointing that California lawmakers appear to be prioritizing the best interests of national and international media companies over their own constituents.

Obviously, that statement is a bit self-serving, but this is the only reasonable response to this nonsense (other than to sue to have the law found unconstitutional).
Again, as we’ve detailed many times before, the impact of a tax on an activity is that you get less of that activity. Indeed, that’s often the reason given for taxing certain things. So no one should be surprised that if you tax links, companies that are going to have to pay are now going to decrease the links they allow. And, as is the case with news, where there has been little actual value to companies like Meta (which have long focused on family/friend connections over media), that if they just do a quick cost/benefit analysis of the situation, they’re likely to conclude that it’s just not worth it, and therefore ban links to news sites.
Still, I’m a bit confused by the reaction to this. As happened in Australia, people are attacking Meta over this, which shows an astounding level of entitlement. It’s literally saying (1) you have to allow yourself to be used to promote our news and send traffic to us, AND (2) you have to pay us for letting us use your for promotion and traffic. It’s only reasonable for a website to say “uh, no.” To then attack companies for recognizing what a terrible deal that is… is strange.
I’ve even seen some people call it “censorship” by Meta, which makes no sense at all. Here’s Buffy Wicks, the sponsor of the bill, claiming that this is Meta trying to “silence journalists.” I mean, come on.

Will Buffy Wicks let me post Techdirt articles to her website? Or to her Facebook page? No? Why is she silencing me!? Look, a private company choosing not to do the thing you’re going to force them to pay for, which is not providing much value for them, and which should be free… and then having them say “that’s not worth it,” is so far from silencing people as to call into question why anyone should take Wicks seriously on anything.
This is pretty straightforward economics: California is trying to tax something that is free and always should be free (the ability to link). They’re doing it as a favor to news orgs and as a smack down on companies they have made it clear they dislike (Google and Meta). But, if you’re going to force companies to pay for something that is free, don’t be surprised when they do the math and realize it’s not worth it.