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The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against Google for denying email requests ahead of the November midterm elections, an allegation Google has denied.
The lawsuit, filed Friday night in the District Court for the Eastern District of California, accuses Gmail of “discriminating” the RNC by unfairly sending group emails to users’ spam folders, accusing it of fundraising. and reconciliation efforts, influencing states with significant momentum.
“It is enough already. Due to Google’s blatant prejudice against the Republican Party, we are suing the company “RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the Associated Press in a statement. She stated: “For ten months in a row without providing any justification, Google has been pestering her GOTV and end-of-month donation emails for significant Republicans. We are attempting to change this blatantly biased practice.”
In a statement, Google refuted the charges. We simply do not filter emails based on political party, as we have stated time and time again. The business aims to “maximize email deliverability while avoiding unwanted spam,” said spokesperson Jose Castaneda, adding that Gmail’s spam filters “mirror users’ activities.” The company also offers training and guidance to campaigns.
Google “relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam boxes during key moments in election fundraising and community building,” especially at the end of each month, when political groups often send out more emails. It does not matter if the email is about volunteering, voting, or charitable giving. Additionally, it is irrelevant if the email is sent to the intended recipient.
The complaint focuses on Google’s Gmail, the most popular email service in the world with nearly 1.5 billion users, and how it filters out solicitations and other content to help users avoid being overrun by junk mail. Google and other big email providers develop programs that flag communications likely to be seen as unwanted and transfer them to spam folders that are often rarely, if ever, perused by recipients in an effort to filter material that account users may not want in their inboxes.
Despite Google’s insistence that its algorithm is impartial, a March study from North Carolina State University found that Gmail is considerably more likely to reject messages for trivial reasons. understood. Based on emails exchanged during the 2020 US presidential election, the study discovered that Gmail classified 10% more emails from “left” candidates than “right” candidates as spam. 77% of the emails from are thought to have been categorized as spam. According to a study, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Outlook, competitors of Gmail, frequently favor conservative suggestions over Gmail’s.