In response to claims that it had been unfairly filtering Republican campaign emails to users’ spam folders, Google has committed to a new Gmail inbox feature that will see more political campaign emails being delivered straight to the main mailbox.
The company told Axios (opens in new tab) it will launch a pilot program which will see users having to mark political campaign emails as spam, rather than automatic filtering before they reach the inbox.
This news follows criticism that Google had been implementing algorithms that were filtering more Republican content than Democratic content, though these findings have been hotly disputed.
Gmail political filters
In response to such complaints, Google sought approval from the Federal Election Commission to allow political campaigners to bypass its spam filtering, which was granted in August 2022.
Axios says that “eligible committees, abiding by security requirements and best practices as outlined by Google, can now register to participate.”
José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson who shared information with Axios, says that the company hopes to “provide more certainty for senders during this election period”.
He continues to explain that a “more prominent unsubscribe button” will help users to unsubscribe from political emails that have bypassed spam filtering. The first time a user receives an email, they will have the option to unsubscribe, report it as spam, or to continue to receive the campaign notifications.
Google has been committed to improving the way you interact with your mailbox for a long time, and most recently, it has been upping its machine learning game to help provide better search results.
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