FTC chair warns Google about Gmail’s ‘partisan’ spam filters | TechCrunch

Andrew Ferguson, the chairman appointed by the Federal Trade Commission, recently expressed concern: “Letter management of Gmail is designed to have partisan influence.”

exist Letter to CEO of Letters Sundar PichaiFerguson pointed out The latest story of the New York Post Describe a complaint of targeted victory (a consulting and PR company Working with the Republican National Committee and Elon Musk’s X) Claims that Gmail Flags email links to the Republican fundraising platform win spam without doing the same thing as the email linked to the democratic platform Actblue.

“My understanding from recent reports is that when these messages come from Republican senders, Gmail’s spam filters usually prevent messages from reaching consumers, but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats,” Ferguson wrote.

He warned Alphabet that if Gmail’s filters “prevent Americans from receiving the speech they expect, or donate as they see fit, these filters could harm U.S. consumers and could violate the FTC Act’s prohibition of unfair or deceptive trade practices,” adding that this could lead to “FTC investigations and potential enforcement actions.”

In response, A Google spokesperson told Axios Gmail’s spam filtering “look at various objective signals, such as whether people mark specific emails as spam, or whether a particular ad agency is sending a large number of emails that are often marked as spam,” they said, and the company applies this approach “to the same extent to all senders, regardless of political ideology, whatever it is.”

The spokesperson also said: “We will review this letter and look forward to constructive participation.”

Conservatives often complain that digital platforms, including Gmail, have censored them or treated them otherwise. 2023, Federal Election Commission Republican complaints were rejected Spam filter via Gmail, also federal court RNC lawsuit with similar complaints was dismissed. (RNC seems to be Resuming the lawsuit)

Earlier this month, federal judges Blocked FTC’s investigation into media affairs in left-leaning groups In a study of anti-Semitism content on X, the investigation was described as “retaliatory behavior.”