As if you needed even more evidence that Big Tech functions as an arm of the progressive left, here’s another story demonstrating how they are working to promote the Democratic Party’s agenda. Google, the world’s largest search engine company, is being accused of suppressing bulk emails coming from Republican organizations and candidates through its Gmail service.
This has been an ongoing issue since earlier this year when the Republican National Committee claimed it was losing out on billions of dollars in donations because Gmail’s algorithm sends its emails to users’ spam folders at a far higher rate than emails coming from Democrat-aligned candidates and groups. In April, the RNC lodged a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) over the matter. So far, there has been no resolution on Google’s part.
During a conversation with Fox News Digital, an RNC official said Gmail has “suppressed” over 22 million emails, 358,000 of which were Get Out The Vote (GOTV) messages. The GOP alleges that Google is deliberately sending right-leaning emails to spam folders to decrease the likelihood that they are never seen by potential donors in what they call a “clear pattern of bias.”
“On Sept. 28, Gmail spammed more than 3.1 million RNC emails. The next day, Gmail spammed more than 9.8 million RNC emails, and on Sept. 30, Gmail spammed more than 9.97 million RNC emails,” according to Fox News Digital.
The official told the news outlet that Republicans have discussed the issue with Google “for months” but have received “no resolution.”
The RNC sent data showing that its emails go from “strong inbox delivery— 90-100%” to 0% at the end of each month.
“Every single month, like clockwork, Google suppresses important GOTV and fundraising emails at the end of the month, with zero explanation nor commitment from Google to resolve this issue,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said to Fox. “We are less than 40 days out from Election Day, and important GOTV emails to our opted-in voters in states that have already started early voting are being systematically sent to spam.”
The RNC is calling on the Federal Election Commission to launch an investigation into the search engine company, which claims politics play “no role” in determining which emails are sent to spam folders.
“We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email. When Gmail users say that they don’t want to receive an email, we place the email in the spam folder, politics or political affiliation plays no role in this determination,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda explained. “We recently launched a Federal Election Commission approved pilot program with a small number of campaigns to study whether these changes improve the user experience during this election period.”
However, data collected by North Carolina University earlier this year casts doubt on Google’s claims. Researchers conducted a study analyzing the spam filtering algorithms (SFAs) of Google, Yahoo, and Outlook to ascertain whether political bias was present.
Here’s what they found:
We further observe that Gmail marks a significantly higher percentage (67.6%) of emails from the right as spam compared to the emails from left (just 8.2%). Outlook is unfriendly to all campaign emails, more unfriendly to the left than to the right. It marks a higher percentage of left (95.8%) emails as spam than those of right (75.4%). Yahoo marks 14.2% more left emails as spam than the right emails. Each of these numbers above represents the average across the 22 accounts of the corresponding services. Onward, we will refer to these observations about Gmail leaning towards the left and Outlook and Yahoo towards the right as the aggregate trend.
In June, Google announced the creation of a pilot program that would allow political entities to apply for spam-free status, meaning their emails would not automatically be sent to spam folders. The move was a response to the revelations of their apparent political bias. They sought approval from the FEC to move forward with the program, which was granted.
“Our goal during this pilot program is to assess alternative ways of addressing concerns from bulk senders, while giving users clear controls over their inboxes to minimize unwanted email,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement to The Verge. “We will continue to monitor feedback as the pilot rolls out to ensure it is meeting its goals.”
So far, it is not clear whether the pilot has rolled out, but judging by the fact that the RNC is showing that its emails are still being sent to spam folders, it hasn’t. Of course, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to speculate that the announcement of the program was only a smokescreen designed to make it appear as if they are doing something about the problem when their true intention is to continue making sure conservative-leaning emails do not reach their destination.
This is yet another way Big Tech hopes to influence elections. But the RNC and conservatives need to take a harsher approach to this issue. The leaders of these companies are not going to stop doing the Democrats’ work just because folks on the right are complaining about it. There needs to be a slew of legal threats against these organizations. Otherwise, they will have no impetus to play fair.
