Is Google automatically sending GOP emails to spam folders?

(Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

This is one of those stories where if you’d told me about this as little as ten years ago I’d have accused you of falling victim to conspiracy theories. But in 2022 it took me all of a second or two before I nodded my head and said to myself, ‘yep. That checks out.’ The report in question, available at The Daily Wire, finds that fundraising emails from Republican groups and candidates are vastly more likely to wind up in the spam folders of G-mail users than similar broadcasts from Democratic outfits. The volume of these emails was staggering, measuring in the millions or tens of millions in a single day. The highest frequency of spam designations came in the final days of the months when a fundraising period was coming to a close. The RNC has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission since Google refuses to even answer inquiries as to what’s going on here.

Advertisement

The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that Google is suppressing the GOP vote in November by sending millions of RNC election emails to recipients’ spam folders.

According to RNC officials, over 22 million emails sent in the last three days of September from the RNC were spammed by Google; over 3.1 million on September 28, over 9.8 million on September 29, and over 9.97 million on September 30.

“Every single month, like clockwork, Google suppresses important GOTV and fundraising emails at the end of the month, with zero explanation nor commitment from Google to resolve this issue,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel claimed to Fox News Digital. “We are less than 40 days out from Election Day, and important GOTV emails to our opted-in voters in states that have already started early voting are being systematically sent to spam.”

Just to conduct an entirely unscientific test of my own, I paused while writing this article and opened up my spam folder. (Yes, I’m still using G-mail.) Without even scrolling, I looked at the 12 most recent items that went to the spam file. Several of them were legitimate spam, such as one congratulating me on winning a large amount of money in a Walmart promotional campaign – assuming I was willing to provide them with all of my personal and banking information. Among the rest, I found a fundraising pitch for New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc, one from New Mexico Republican candidate for Attorney General Jeremy Gay, one from New Hampshire Senate Republicans, and one for the Marco Rubio PressShop.

Advertisement

I did not locate a single item from any Democratic Party entities and I do not recall ever marking an email from any of those Republicans as spam. Coincidence? Perhaps. But we’re asking the world “coincidence” to do a lot of heavy lifting here. If I’m going to be fair to Google here, it’s almost certainly true that I probably have more correspondence with Republican and conservative groups than liberal ones (though I do have some on both sides), so perhaps I wind up on more GOP lists. But the disparity is notable.

At this point, can anyone honestly say they would be surprised to find out that this is verifiably happening and that it’s intentional on the part of some people at Google who build the algorithms that run in the background of their apps? Twitter bans tweets and suspends the accounts of users who engage in unapproved thinking. YouTube shoots down videos from people who even speculate about anything that doesn’t conform with the teachings of the New Church of The Science.

Now consider the fact that most Twitter users will notice if a bunch of their tweets go AWOL or will be asked about it by their friends. YouTube creators tend to frequently check to see how many views their videos receive. They will notice when the shadow ban hammer is brought down on their heads. But how often do any of you actually look at your spam folders unless you’ve been waiting for a specific response from someone that hasn’t arrived? I would wager that it’s not very often. I can’t remember the last time I did that before today.

Advertisement

Hopefully, the FEC will take rapid action on this and publicly release the results of an investigation. And the current Chair of the FEC, Allen Dickerson, is actually a Republican and a Trump appointee, so who knows? Something might actually get done.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement