Republicans File Complaint Against FEC Over Alleged Gmail Censorship

© AP Photo / Michel EulerIn this Nov. 18, 2019, file photo, the logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris.
In this Nov. 18, 2019, file photo, the logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris. - Sputnik International, 1920, 27.04.2022
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Republicans have been fighting Big Tech companies over censorship for years. Former President Donald Trump was banned indefinitely from Twitter after the January 6 2021 riots and an interview with him was removed from YouTube.
Republicans have filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) alleging that Google sent their fundraising emails to users’ spam folders at a much higher rate than their Democratic counterparts.
The complaint is dated April 26 and was jointly filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
They cite a study by North Carolina State University that showed only 10.72 per cent of fundraising emails supporting liberal candidates went to spam folders while 77.2 per cent of emails from right-leaning candidates were marked as spam.
FILE PHOTO: Logo of Google outside their headquarters in Mountainview, California. - Sputnik International, 1920, 21.01.2022
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The study estimates that Gmail’s spam filters cost GOP candidates $2 billion in donations since 2019. And that disparity was likely intentional, the complaint says, because the filtering increased as time went on.
“Moreover, Gmail’s disparity increased as Election Day neared, with the percentage of Republican candidate emails marked as spam going up, while the percentage of Democrat emails marked as spam stayed constant,” the complaint states. “The study also finds that Gmail continued to mark Republican emails as spam even after users opened and read similar messages. This means that Gmail effectively blocked users from receiving messages from Republican candidates, even after those users took actions indicating that they wanted to receive them.”
Google previously rejected the findings of the study, stating that user action was the cause for the disparity.
"Mail classifications in Gmail automatically adjust to match Gmail users' preferences and actions. Gmail users can move messages to spam, or to any other category," a Google spokesperson told Fox News. "Gmail automatically adjusts the classifications of particular emails according to these user actions."
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The study also looked at Yahoo and Outlook’s filtering. While there was some disparity between Republican and Democratic candidates, it was not nearly as vast as Google’s was.
According to the complaint, FEC regulations allow commercial vendors like Google to provide their services to political campaigns without it being considered a campaign contribution — as long as those services are provided equally to all political candidates and stay objective.

“Google used its corporate resources to provide a massive service to their Democrat opponents by denying Republican candidates the same ability to communicate with voters. In doing so, Google also provided its services to Republican senders and individual Gmail account holders on different terms and conditions than it provided other similarly situated Democrat senders and individual Gmail account holders, without reflecting any plausible commercial consideration,” the complainants allege.

The complaint asks that “the Commission find reason to believe that Google violated the Act and Commission regulations by providing illegal in-kind corporate contributions to the Biden campaign and other Democrat candidates and authorize an investigation to determine the amount and total recipients of Google’s illegal in-kind contributions.”
“Companies like Google don’t think you have the right to hear both sides: they’d rather make the decision for you.” the RNC, NRSC and NRCC said in their joint statement.
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