Jan 18, 2023
The Federal Election Commission recently dismissed a complaint by Republicans who asserted that Google flagged their fundraising emails as spam more frequently than they did for Democrats. According to the Daily Caller, the complaint originated with a March 2022 study from North Carolina State University that discovered 67.6% of GOP fundraising emails went straight to users' spam folders. Comparatively, only 8.2% of Democrat emails requesting money faced similar issues. Congressional Republicans claimed that the "overwhelmingly disproportionate suppression" was significant enough to qualify as illegal corporate contribution. "Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution," the FEC argued when dismissing the complaint. "Though the NCSU Study [sic] appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google's spam filter, it explicitly states