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Are Email Service Providers Politically Biased Against Republicans?

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Are Email Service Providers Politically Biased Against Republicans?

August 2, 2022

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This piece was originally published in The Hill.

Is Google at war with Republican candidates? The Republican National Committee and several others seem to think so, as it claims delivery of its emails to Gmail inboxes is nearly 0 percent, costing the party and candidates about $2 billion since 2019. The claims are based on a report from North Carolina State University, according to an RNC complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Is the spam problem that bad? After all, most political emails look like spam. Shouldn’t providers be permitted to identify political emails as spam? If providers were consistent at equally identifying political emails from the right and left as spam, perhaps. But according to a recent Google filing, Gmail may have a problem over-identifying Republican emails as spam.

According to the RNC, Gmail’s bias causes major problems, because “Any disparity in the messages making it into recipients’ inboxes can have huge effects on message dissemination and fundraising during the critical months leading up to an election.” The filing further alleges that the filtering bias grew worse as election day neared.

Click here to read the full piece in The Hill.

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