Political campaign emails will soon be safe from landing in Gmail's spam folders if a new Google initiative gets the green light.
The tech giant has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to approve a new pilot program that will reduce the risk of such emails being marked as spam.
The move could flood Gmail inboxes with political campaign emails, especially as the United States gears up for the 2024 presidential election.
Gmail policy spam
The filing, spotted by Axios (opens in a new tab), follows complaints from the GOP that Google is unfairly filtering more of their email (opens in a new tab) than their Democratic rivals.
A recent study (opens in a new tab) of 300 emails during the 000 election found that Gmail was 2020% more likely to mark messages from Republicans as spam than those from Democrats.
The party introduced a bill in early June 2022 that, if passed, would require platforms like Gmail to explain exactly how it filters messages, as well as make it illegal to classify emails in spam campaigns, unless the user expressly request it. .
In response, Google seeks to make the process more transparent, with its pilot project meaning that "authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and executive political action committees registered with the FEC" are exempt from being labeled as spam.
These emails will still need to follow Google's content and security guidelines, and users will need to consent to receiving such messages. The company says that upon receiving an email from a campaign for the first time, users would see a "highlighted" notification asking for their approval and would be able to unsubscribe from any future emails.
"We recently asked the FEC to authorize a pilot program that could help improve email rates for political bulk senders and provide more transparency into email deliverability, while allowing users to protect their inboxes. by unsubscribing or labeling emails as spam," said Google spokesman José Castañeda. . Axios.
"We want Gmail to provide a great experience for all of our users, which includes minimizing spam, but we don't filter email based on political affiliation," he added.
"We look forward to exploring new ways to deliver the best Gmail experience possible."