A lawsuit was filed by the Republican National Committee against Google claiming email solicitations have been suppressed with email filters.
Google denied the claim.
The lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of California on Friday, according to WENY News.
What does the lawsuit say about the Republican committee and Google?
The Republican committee has sued Gmail, part of Google, for discriminating against them. They claim Gmail is sending their emails directly to user’s spam folders.
They claim this has a direct impact on their ability to fundraise as well as get votes through their own efforts.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel made a statement to the Associated Press discussing the issue.
“Enough is enough — we are suing Google for their blatant bias against Republicans,” McDaniel said. “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 denies the charges entirely.
“As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said.
Google relies on an algorithm to complete things and claim the algorithm is entirely neutral.
A study done in March showed that Gmail was more likely to block emails that appeared to be for conservative causes.
Data was taken from emails sent to Gmail accounts for the 2020 presidential election. It appeared that “left wing” emails saw 10% of emails go to spam folders and “right wing” emails saw 77% of their emails go to spam.
The study also found that Yahoo and Microsoft Outlook were less likely to do the same to conservative causes.
Student loan forgiveness and what would happen if the plan was blocked
FingerLakes1.com is the region’s leading all-digital news publication. The company was founded in 1998 and has been keeping residents informed for more than two decades. Have a lead? Send it to [email protected].