GOP senators are not happy with email providers like Gmail and for that reason, they’re uniting and trying to roll out a bill that stops such companies from allotting campaign messages into spam folders.
The news comes after the senators were able to shed light on a new study which resulted in a number of surprising findings. And this includes how Gmail made use of spam filters that directed campaign messages in that direction, which they felt was unfair and a form of true censorship.
The issue was first brought up by John Thune who is a Republican senator for South Dakota. He mentioned during a recent press conference how he was able to make such alarming findings and therefore he and his party will not back down against their claims.
The senator was seen admitting furiously how he would be going after and restricting such email providers from indulging in such unlawful behavior as it is a form of discrimination against all politically themed emails.
For now, there are no details on how exactly that particular bill would work but there were some clear fingers pointing at Gmail, thanks to the study conducted at the North Carolina State University.
The study clearly delineated how there was a bias by email providers against such messages that were reportedly sent out during the Election Campaign of 2020.
On average, Gmail was called out for being responsible for making nearly 60% of correct emails as spam content when candidates arose from the right-wing party. On the other hand, the study found that Outlook marked around 20% while Yahoo was able to mark 14.2% of right-wing emails as spam incorrectly.
John Thune is not the only Republican creating a commotion on the issue. Just like him, there are so many others that continue to quote the study and how Gmail was clearly targeting emails from GOP’s political campaigns.
Keeping all of this aside, we did find one very interesting point and that was related to the authors of the study calling out the senators for taking the research’s findings completely out of context.
Speaking to the Washington Post recently, one such author says their findings of Gmail being biased dropped to a great degree once the user starts to manually check and uncheck their emails as spam.
Another interesting point by the authors is how there was no proof that Google tried to purposefully filter emails as a strategy to impact the US elections of 2020.
Read next: Google Lets Rival Firms Place Ads On YouTube To Address An EU Antitrust Investigation
The news comes after the senators were able to shed light on a new study which resulted in a number of surprising findings. And this includes how Gmail made use of spam filters that directed campaign messages in that direction, which they felt was unfair and a form of true censorship.
The issue was first brought up by John Thune who is a Republican senator for South Dakota. He mentioned during a recent press conference how he was able to make such alarming findings and therefore he and his party will not back down against their claims.
The senator was seen admitting furiously how he would be going after and restricting such email providers from indulging in such unlawful behavior as it is a form of discrimination against all politically themed emails.
For now, there are no details on how exactly that particular bill would work but there were some clear fingers pointing at Gmail, thanks to the study conducted at the North Carolina State University.
The study clearly delineated how there was a bias by email providers against such messages that were reportedly sent out during the Election Campaign of 2020.
On average, Gmail was called out for being responsible for making nearly 60% of correct emails as spam content when candidates arose from the right-wing party. On the other hand, the study found that Outlook marked around 20% while Yahoo was able to mark 14.2% of right-wing emails as spam incorrectly.
John Thune is not the only Republican creating a commotion on the issue. Just like him, there are so many others that continue to quote the study and how Gmail was clearly targeting emails from GOP’s political campaigns.
Keeping all of this aside, we did find one very interesting point and that was related to the authors of the study calling out the senators for taking the research’s findings completely out of context.
Speaking to the Washington Post recently, one such author says their findings of Gmail being biased dropped to a great degree once the user starts to manually check and uncheck their emails as spam.
Another interesting point by the authors is how there was no proof that Google tried to purposefully filter emails as a strategy to impact the US elections of 2020.
Read next: Google Lets Rival Firms Place Ads On YouTube To Address An EU Antitrust Investigation
