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Following responses from Republican leaders, the Federal Election Commission is giving the go-ahead to a Google pilot program that allows authorized political committees or campaigns to bypass Gmail’s spam filters and go straight into users’ inboxes.
Google came up with the program after the GOP accused Republican campaign emails of being disproportionately spammed, citing a recent study by North Carolina State University.
“Marketplace Tech’s” Kimberly Adams spoke with Axios technology and policy reporter Ashley Gold about the details of that study, the pilot program and more. An edited transcript of their speech is below.
Ashley Gold: This study found that Gmail scans conservative emails more frequently than others, such as Yahoo Mail or other email clients – Outlook Mail. But the researchers involved in the study told some reporters that what emerged later depends on how users choose to mark emails as spam, and they believe conservatives who take too much meaning believe them. Those from the study were misrepresenting their findings, and said they would not conclude that the study was particularly biased by Gmail.
Kimberly Adams: So what does this trial program do?
Gold: The pilot program allows political campaigns that are accredited by the Federal Election Commission and meet certain criteria — so they must be legitimate — to send their emails and not be automatically caught in Gmail’s spam filter. Instead, they go directly to users’ inboxes, and users are given a choice: Do you want to mark this as spam? And if so, emails from that sender will be marked as spam. Or the user says, “No, don’t mark it, this is spam. I actually looked for this in my inbox.
Adams: How are people responding to this idea? I know the Federal Election Commission has taken a poll on this.
Gold: People are responding very poorly to this idea. People say, “I’ve had enough spam. I get enough spam calls. I get enough spam. The last thing I need in my life is more spam. You know, some people said, “Conservatives are trying to cheat the system.” When I read all these comments I got the feeling that people are too busy with their phone and email communication and they don’t like it at all.
Adams: So now it’s Google’s turn to act. Do you really want to open this program? And if so, how soon?
Gold: So I googled it. I was told there is no start date for the program, and they are currently working on the details.
Adams: So what does it mean that Google is at least appearing to, you know, come up with a new strategy and give some direction in this argument?
Gold: So Google has a lot of fires to put out right now. They are being sued by the federal government. They are being prosecuted by various Attorney Generals. There’s a major antitrust bill that could hit the Senate floor in maybe two months, and they’ve been opposing it. So they have to pick their battles sparingly. This is the way it goes with technology firms and the government. They take turns, you know, make policies that might upset one side of the aisle, and then make policies that please the other side of the aisle. And I don’t want to say that it’s only conservatives who are angry about big tech, because absolutely liberals and Democrats are too. But they will certainly not escape the scrutiny of any political party.
If you’d like to read more details on how it works, you can find this news release, Gold’s report, as well as Google’s July comment regarding the FEC program.
You can also read the original North Carolina State University study, where researchers also found that Outlook and Yahoo’s mail service filter more political emails from left-leaning campaigns, candidates or parties as spam.
And according to Gold, the study’s authors did a series of interviews with The Washington Post, saying the GOP was misrepresenting its findings.
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