Explained: Why is the US’ Republican National Committee suing Gmail

The spam filter that Google uses for its email services, Gmail, does not always work the way it is supposed to. This time though, the filter’s failure to work properly has landed Google in hot waters. The Republican Party, one of the oldest political parties in the United States of America has sued Google and Gmail over the way manner in which their spam filter has been targeting emails from the Republicans.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against Google in California for allegedly and unfairly throwing GOP campaign emails to the spam folder at a time when fundraising is especially crucial ahead of the November congressional midterm elections. The lawsuit specifically alleges that said emails get filtered to spam around the end of each month when fundraising is supposedly at its most fruitful.

Tech companies in the United States have long been accused of stifling the voices of those on the political right, and of being pro-Democrats especially when it comes to implementing their policies. The Republican party has often targeted companies like Twitter, Meta and Google and called engineers and moderators working in these organisations of being “communists” and “leftists.”

Their attack started garnering some legitimacy when a study from North Carolina State University apparently found that Republican emails were sent to spam at a higher rate than those sent by Democrats. However, Google has repeatedly denied that this is the case. There is ample evidence out there that suggests that it is not the content, but the mailing habits of a sender that helps spam filters determine whether an email is a spam or not.  

To counter such a thing from happening again, Google launched a program in August after taking the necessary approvals from the American Federal Election Commission that individual campaigns can apply for an exception with the intent of stopping emails from getting sent to spam. Reports suggest that the RNC is not part of this program, though it’s not clear whether that’s by choice or not. If it were, its emails would avoid traditional spam detection and would have a special banner on them signalling that the sender is part of the program.