FTC to Google: Gmail allegedly discriminates against Republican campaign emails
The head of the FTC accuses Google of bias, claiming Gmail discriminates against Republican campaign emails. He threatens consequences for these alleged actions
(Image: Jess Rodriguez/Shutterstock.com)
The head of the US consumer protection authority FTC has accused Google in an open letter to Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai that Gmail moves emails from Republicans to the spam folder more often than those from Democrats. Andrew Ferguson warns that this would violate Federal Trade Commission regulations and could lead to investigations. Google has already contradicted this, according to the political magazine Axios, a spokeswoman explained that the spam filters would evaluate a number of signals. For example, an email would be classified as spam if many people marked it as such or if a sender sent a particularly large number of messages that were marked as spam. This happens regardless of the political orientation.
Not a new accusation
The accusation against Google is not new; the US Republican National Committee (RNC) has felt discriminated against by the most widely used email provider in the US for years. What is new now is that the accusation is also shared by US authorities. In 2022, after the recent mid-term elections to the US Congress, the RNC filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination, which was dismissed by the competent federal district court. The RNC had not sufficiently demonstrated that Google had acted in bad faith, it was argued at the time.
Although Google was spared a court battle at the time, the judge had strong words to say. The fact that Gmail's spam filters had an unequal impact on the emails of political parties was worrying, he explained. Google was aware of this bias and had not yet been able to correct it. However, a shutdown would be harmful for users. Even if they are by and large imperfect, they are not morally objectionable. The accusation now made by the head of the FTC comes just a few days after a report by the conservative New York Post, which stated that Republican fundraising appeals were still ending up in spam more often and were therefore harder to find.
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Before the 2022 midterm elections, Google launched a program to flag political emails to protect them from being sorted into spam. This was approved by the US Federal Election Commission. Political parties were able to register for the program and their messages were then only checked for phishing and malware. However, the RNC did not participate in the program at the time, precisely because Google was accused of bias in the filtering process. The Verge reported at the time that the RNC emails had an intimidating and threatening tone and were often sent more than ten times a day.
(mho)
