Google Sued by US Republican National Committee for Sending Campaign Emails to Spam

Google is back in the spotlight after sending all campaign emails from the Republican National Committee (RNC) to the spam folder, (photo: Solen Feyissa / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Google is back in the spotlight after sending all campaign emails from the Republican National Committee (RNC) to a spam folder, claiming it was a discriminatory filtering practice.

RNC then filed a lawsuit in federal court in California, United States (US) last Friday.

"(Google) unlawfully discriminated against the Republican National Committee (RNC) by restricting its email messages because of the RNC's political affiliations and views," the RNC lawsuit said.

“Google has dropped millions of RNC emails en masse to the spam folders of potential donors and supporters during key points in election fundraising and community building. Google's most gruesome screening time is damning," he added.

It is known, Google's move is an extension of the company's spam email filtering program.

The controversial pilot program changed political email filters to allow them to bypass the company's algorithms for spam.

On the other hand, political email will go to the spam folder only if the user takes action to mark it as spam.

The proposal to run the pilot project comes after strong criticism from US Republicans that spam filters are biased against conservatives. But the accusations were denied by the tech giant.

"As we've said many times, we don't filter email based on political affiliation. Gmail's spam filters reflect user actions," Google spokesman José Castaneda said in a statement, quoted by Reuters, October 24.

In a sign of the public's hatred of spam, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) received thousands of comments urging him to reject the request.

"We provide training and guidance for campaigns, we recently launched an FEC-approved pilot for political senders, and we continue to work to maximize email delivery while minimizing unwanted spam," a Google spokesperson said.

The RNC said the discrimination had persisted for about 10 months despite best efforts to work with Google. According to him, his alleged routing of emails to spam folders has cost him revenue and more money will be lost in the coming weeks leading up to the midterm elections.