Google caught flagging GOP fundraiser emails as suspicious –sending them directly to spam: memo | Latest Tech News
Google is at it again — and GOP marketing campaign donations could possibly be a casualty.
The search giant has been caught this summer season flagging Republican fundraising emails as “dangerous” spam — protecting them from hitting gmail customers’ inboxes — while leaving related solicitations from Democrats untouched, a consulting firm warned.
That’s despite repeatedly sparking headlines and lawsuits in current years over the allegedly partisan follow. Last 12 months, a federal choose tossed a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee that complained of biased e mail filtering.
Targeted Victory said Gmail was leaving Democratic fundraising emails untouched. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
In 2023, the Federal Election Commission dismissed an RNC grievance alleging discrimination in Gmail’s spam filters.
Nonetheless, Targeted Victory – whose shoppers embody the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Rep. Steve Scalise and Sen. Marsha Blackburn – said it noticed that the “serious and troubling” pattern was still going on as lately as June and July of this 12 months.
Gmail has been flagging emails containing hyperlinks to the fundraising platform WinRed and “in many cases, sending them directly to spam,” according to a copy of the memo to shoppers solely obtained by The Post.
Meanwhile, Targeted Victory carried out checks in which emails containing hyperlinks to the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue had been delivered without issue. The memo included video demonstrations of the firm’s checks.
“If Gmail is allowed to quietly suppress WinRed links while giving ActBlue a free pass, it will continue to tilt the playing field in ways that voters never see, but campaigns will feel every single day,” the memo said.
Targeted Victory said Google flags GOP fundraising emails as “dangerous.” Targeted Victory
The memo might fuel new allegations of political bias against Google – which was accused by Elon Musk in March of interfering “to help Democrats thousands of times every election season.”
Critics including President Trump have accused Google of manipulating search outcomes to damage Republicans and even of suppressing data of the assassination attempt against Trump last 12 months. The company has strenuously denied wrongdoing.
When reached for remark on Wednesday, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the company’s “email filter protections are in place to keep our users safe.”
“They look at a variety of signals – like whether a user has previously marked an email as spam – and apply equally to all senders, regardless of political ideology,” Castañeda said in a assertion.
The company said it’s “email filter protections” are meant to keep “our customers secure.’ SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
A 2022 research by researchers at North Carolina State University discovered that Gmail flagged 59% more Republican fundraising emails as spam than Democratic ones during the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.
“We observed that the [spam filtering algorithms] of different email services indeed exhibit biases towards different political affiliations,” the researchers said at the time.
Targeted Victory said it first informed Google about the issue on June 30 after receiving complaints from its shoppers. The company initially “deflected” by “blaming local settings” for the e-mail points, according to the memo.
The consulting firm’s checks concerned sending similar emails through Gmail, with the only distinction being that one contained a WinRed donation hyperlink and the other contained an ActBlue hyperlink.
Republicans have accused Google for years of political bias. REUTERS
“The only difference between the two emails was the link,” the memo said. “ActBlue delivered. WinRed got flagged. That is not a coincidence.”
“This held true even for major accounts, including Trump and Elise Stefanik links, compared to DNC links.”
After weeks of back and forth with Google, the company’s help group acknowledged that hyperlinks to WinRed had been deemed “suspicious” and flagged with a “red warning banner” alerting customers that it was “potentially suspicious or unsafe,” according to a screenshot of a July 22 e mail.
“This should alarm every campaign and committee that relies on email to connect with voters,” the memo said.
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