The Republican National Committee (RNC) has criticized efforts from Google, which the tech giant says are meant to help prevent political emails from being sent to spam folders.
Based on AxiosThe group says Google’s plans aren’t enough to stop the automatic filtering, and is now preparing to take the tech giant to court in California.
According to the allegation, Google “placed millions of RNC emails in the spam folders of potential donors and supporters during key moments in election fundraising and community building.”
Filter political emails in Gmail
RNS claims to have observed normal email delivery for most of the month, with many of their emails being sent as spam by the end of the month. They said that “the period of the end of this month has been historically the most successful RNC fundraising.”
After criticism that more Republican content than Democratic content was filtered as spam, Google launch a pilot program in September 2022 that would prompt users to mark political campaign emails as spam in the first place, in the hope that more political campaign emails would be delivered straight to users’ inboxes. The feature will then provide a more prominent ‘unsubscribe’ button for users to opt out.
A Google spokesperson told Axios that “Gmail’s spam filter reflects user actions,” however, after more than nine months of discussion, RNC says the issue remains unresolved.
However, the publication notes that the RNC has not yet signed up for an experimental Gmail spam filtering program designed to reduce these types of errors.
The ability of political campaigners’ email to surpass email serviceThe Federal Election Commission’s spam filtering feature was granted by the Federal Election Commission in August. Once the feature is rolled out, eligible committees can then apply for their participation according to terms and requirements set forth by Google.
Through the Axios (opens in a new tab)
