Google wants to end a controversial pilot program that allows political groups to send their relevant messages through the back door into the inboxes of potential voters. The system, which launched last September, allowed politicians and parties to register with Google and request that their emails not be rejected as spam by the Gmail filters. It was introduced after heavy criticism from the Republican Party , which accused the internet giant of a one-sided filtering strategy.
Fundraising emails sorted out
“Enough is enough - we are suing Google for their blatant bias against Republicans,” said a statement from Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the national organizing committee of the Republican Party in the USA, in October 2022. The algorithm would disproportionately mark the party's fundraising emails as spam and sort them out. “We will put an end to this bias-driven approach,” McDaniel announced at the time.
To avert the lawsuit, Google finally gave in and introduced a new program that allowed political candidates, parties and committees to contact the Internet company and have their messages not filtered out by the spam filter system. But even that didn't go far enough for representatives of the Republican Party. They speculated that Google was to blame for being able to raise less fundraising money than its Democratic competitors.
“No filtering for political reasons”
“We will continue to invest in filtering technology that protects people from unwanted messages while allowing senders to reach the inboxes of users who want to see them,” Google spokesman José Castañeda is quoted as saying by The Verge. He does not believe that the Republicans' lawsuit will be successful and refers to the recent decision of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), which just a few weeks ago dismissed a similar RNC complaint about Google's spam filter as unfounded: “Like the FEC has confirmed, we do not filter emails for political reasons. The lawsuit lacks any basis.”
Source: press release
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