Republicans target political bias in Google spam filter

From Washington Times.com (June 16):

A top Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation that would ban Google and other email platforms from filtering campaign emails into spam folders, in the latest bid by Congress to crack down on what critics see as Big Tech’s political bias.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said the measure would prohibit email platforms from using filtering algorithms on campaign email if the candidate is running for federal office.

“Gmail and other email services’ inboxing practices are a black box to consumers, and they operate with little accountability,” said Mr. Thune, the Republican whip. “This legislation would help ensure that Americans, not Big Tech, are making the decisions on what campaign communications they want to receive.”

Mr. Thune, the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on communications, technology and internet issues, drafted the bill after a recent North Carolina State University study found Google, the nation’s largest email platform, flagged more Republican campaign emails as spam than Democratic emails during the 2020 election season.

The same study, released in March, found Outlook and Yahoo filtered more Democratic emails into spam folders.

“We observed that the spam-filtering algorithms of different email services indeed exhibit biases towards different political affiliations,” the study authors wrote. [read more]

If Google is doing this (they deny it), they shouldn’t be filtering out political email. But I am not sure a bill is required or not. Use another email service.