Google Stops Spam's Anti-filter Pilot Program In Gmail

Chairman of the Republican RNC, Ronna McDaniel, who had admitted to being harmed by the Gmail sum feature. (photo: Twitter @GOPChairwoman)

JAKARTA - Google plans to end a controversial pilot program that will allow political groups to pass Gmail's spam filter later this month. Google launched the program last September in response to Republican accusations that their algorithm disproportionately marks conservative fundraising email as spam.

This program allows candidates, political party committees and leadership political action committees to register with Google for their messages to be excluded from the spam detection system on the search engine.

"We will continue to invest in spam filtering technology that protects people from unwanted messages while still allowing senders to reach inboxes for users who wish to view the message," said milik Castaneda, Google spokesperson, in a statement to The Verge on Tuesday, January 24.

Throughout the 2022 election cycle, Republican anger over technology censorship was revived by an academic study that discovered Gmail services, marking GOP fundraising email as spa more frequent than email from Democratic Party senders.

For officials on the Republican National Committee and Republican National Senator Committee, the study explains why GOP candidates are often struggling to raise more money than opponents in their Democratic Party last year.

The pilot program is part of Google's plan to address the issue of this Republican fundraising. But RNC and NRSC argue that the program is not far enough in overcoming their problems.

Nearly a month after the launch of the program, The Verge report found that RNC did not register for the program. In October, RNC sued Google for alleged bias against the Republican Party, claiming that the company's spam filter directly harmed GOP fundraising.

"That's enough, we are suing Google for their blatant bias towards the Republican Party," RNC chairman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement announcing the lawsuit last October. We are committed to ending this clear bias pattern.

Earlier this month, the Federal Elections Commission rejected similar complaints filed by Republicans over Google's spam filter. In a January FEC letter to Google, the commission " found no reason to believe" that Gmail's screening system was the same as the corporate contribution to the Democratic Party.

Google is now seeking to dismiss RNC's lawsuit last October. As confirmed by FEC's recent bipartisan decision, we did not filter email for political purposes and such as FEC complaints, this lawsuit is unfounded," Castaneda said in a statement on Tuesday referring to the RNC lawsuit.