Google launches program to keep campaign emails out of spam folder

A company spokesperson told Axios that Google has launched a pilot program to prevent emails from political campaigns from passing through Gmail’s spam filter.

The tech giant’s move, which was approved by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) last month, follows Republicans’ criticism of Google after Republican and conservative campaign emails showed Gmail users had more material in their spam folders than Democrats and Left’s material. .

Axios acknowledged this and said the move was “in part” the result of Google’s “yielding to pressure from conservatives who claimed the company had flagged Republican emails as spam more often than others.”

“Despite hundreds of negative comments leveled against the FEC, the FEC approved the program in August,” Axios continued, clearly unhappy with Google taking steps to remove bias from Gmail.

As Breitbart News reported in April, a study by North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science found that A Look at Political Bias in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms in the 2020 US Elections, It found that there was a significant bias against email from conservative sources in Gmail during the 2020 election.

Microsoft and Yahoo showed a slight bias towards email from conservative candidates, while Google flagged emails from conservatives as spam 59.3% more often than emails from Democrats.

The company says that exempting Google from the spam filter aims to correct this bias.

“We hope the pilot starts with a small number of campaigns from both sides and we’ll see if these changes improve the user experience and give more confidence to senders,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Axios. Said. . “We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses. During the pilot, users will be controlled with a more visible unsubscribe button.”

Eligible campaign committees can now sign up with Google to be exempt from the spam filter, but emails will continue to be scanned for phishing and malware.