Google is being sued by senior Republicans for allegedly screening out “crucial” fundraising emails.
The Republican National Committee has accused the tech giant of blocking their emails with “zero explanation”, according to a lawsuit filed by the political party in District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman told the Associated Press: “Enough is enough — we are suing Google for their blatant bias against Republicans. For ten months in a row, Google has sent crucial end-of-month Republican GOTV and fundraising emails to spam with zero explanation. We are committed to putting an end to this clear pattern of bias”.
Google -who run Gmail - has strongly denied the basis of the legal action as they say they “simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation”.
Jose Castaneda, a spokesperson said: “As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions,” adding they work with political groups and campaigns to “maximise email and deliverability while minimising unwanted spam.”
The GOP’s lawsuit centres on the email service - which is the world’s biggest with roughly 1.5 billion users - and how it filters out incoming messages that they think individual account holders are not interested in.
The court documents say that Google has “relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building” — particularly at the end of each month, when political groups tend to send more messages. “It doesn’t matter whether the email is about donating, voting, or community outreach. And it doesn’t matter whether the emails are sent to people who requested them.”
Google has argued their platform is not politically prejudiced but a March study from North Carolina State University found they were more likely to block emails from conservative groups. Using data from the 2020 Presidential election, they estimated Gmail sent 10 per cent of email correspondence from “left-wing” candidates into spam while putting 77 per cent of memos from “right-wing” candidates into spam. The research found that their competition - such as Yahoo and Outlook - were more likely to prefer emails from less liberal causes.
In April, the RNC pounced on the study and cited it when calling on the Federal Election Commission to look into Google’s “censorship” of its attempts to fundraise.
They argue it is “a financially devastating example of Silicon Valley tech companies unfairly shaping the political playing field to benefit their preferred far-left candidates.”
Following this, the FEC have greenlit a pilot that allows political groups to avoid spam filters which Google has signed up to.
