Thread: RNC says Google suppressed more than 22M GOTV, fundraising emails in September

RNC says Google suppressed more than 22M GOTV, fundraising emails in September, exploring 'legal options'

Brooke Singman, Peter Hasson - Monday Fox News

The Republican National Committee says Google is suppressing get-out-the-vote and fundraising emails by sending millions of GOP election emails to users’ Gmail spam folders, with party leadership threatening to explore legal options to "put an end" to what they call a "clear pattern of bias."

According to RNC officials, emails being sent by the RNC to Republican subscribers who use Gmail accounts in the final days of each month are being sent to spam folders.
An RNC official told Fox News Digital that since Sept. 28, Gmail has "suppressed" more than 22 million RNC emails—358,000 of which were GOTV emails.


GOOGLE'S GMAIL CENSORSHIP COST GOP CANDIDATES $2B SINCE 2019, REPUBLICANS SAY, CITING NEW STUDY



On Sept. 28, Gmail spammed more than 3.1 million RNC emails. The next day, Gmail spammed more than 9.8 million RNC emails, and on Sept. 30, Gmail spammed more than 9.97 million RNC mails.


An RNC official told Fox News Digital that Republicans have raised this issue with Google "for months" and said they have received "no resolution."


"Our emails have been suppressed despite concrete changes that have improved overall performance," an official said, noting the RNC, last month, updated their segmentation to factor in recency of click, petition signature, and donation.


"Despite having a significantly positive impact on performance, this appears to have had absolutely no impact on the timing of this end-of-month spamming," the official explained.


The RNC provided Fox News with data showing that party emails go from "strong inbox delivery— 90-100%" down to 0% at the end of the month.


"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 told Fox News. "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."
"Enough is enough," she said. "Big Tech bias is undermining the democratic process and the RNC is exploring our legal options to put an end to this clear pattern of bias."
Republican Party officials told Fox News that Google’s "disproportionate suppression of Republican emails constitutes an illegal corporate contribution to Democrat candidates."





RNC officials are now urging the Federal Election Commission to launch a formal investigation into Google’s practices.


Google, though, told Fox News that political affiliation plays "no role" in whether emails are placed in spam folders.


"We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email. When Gmail users say that they don't want to receive an email, we place the email in the spam folder, politics or political affiliation plays no role in this determination," Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Fox News. "We recently launched a Federal Election Commission approved pilot program with a small number of campaigns to study whether these changes improve the user experience during this election period."


He added: "We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses."

The pilot program, which was approved by the FEC by a bipartisan 4-1 vote is open to certain political committees who are actively registered with the FEC during the 2022 elections.


Castañeda told Fox News that while the program is still in its early days, Google is seeing a small number of verified political campaigns across both major parties participating.


In order to gain eligibility to the program, participants are required to meet security and authentication requirements and must comply with Google's "bulk sender best practices."


Under the program, though, Castañeda said users remain "100% in control" of their inboxes, meaning Gmail users are given the choice to mark a message as spam or to unsubscribe. If a user chooses to unsubscribe, the emails don't just go to spam, but rather stop coming to the users' inbox altogether, as it requires the campaign or party to remove that user from their distribution list within 24 hours.


Castañeda said that campaigns who hit a 5% spam rate will be removed from the pilot program.


Meanwhile, Republicans have pointed to a non-partisan study by researchers at North Carolina State University which found that Gmail allows the vast majority of emails from the Democratic Party to land in the user's inbox while more than two-thirds of messages from conservative candidates are marked as spam.


Gmail "retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam)," the study found.


During the 2020 election cycle, an RNC official said the study found that Gmail routed Republican emails to spam at a rate approximately 820% higher than similar Democrat fundraising appeals.


Fox News first reported on the study earlier this year, which found that conservative candidates raised $737 million on Republican fundraising platform WinRed from Gmail users in 2019 and 2020. Because, according to the study, just 32% of fundraising emails were delivered, the Republicans estimate they missed out on $1.5 billion in contributions during the 2020 election cycle.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ns/ar-AA12xD7B

RNC threatens to sue Google for sending its emails to people’s spam folders

Johanna Chisholm - The Independent

The Republican National Committee has threatened to sue Google over claims its emails are landing in Gmail users’ spam folder.

“For the past ten months, the last four days of every month, all of our emails go undeliverable, 0 per cent deliverability. This is outrageous,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday morning. “It is voter suppression by Big Tech, and we have to find a way to hold them accountable.”

Ms Daniel said the committee should have an announcement “soon” about their plans to sue the tech titan.
“We need to find a way to keep Big Tech’s thumb off the scale in our elections and our democracy, because they should not be able to suppress emails that we’re sending to people who asked for us to send these emails,” she added.

According to the RNC’s figures, between the days of 28 September and 30 September, the Silicon Valley titan has had emails from the committee sent to the spam folders of individuals’ inboxes who had opted in to emails from the Republican organisation.

Ron Filipkowski

@RonFilipkowski

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Ronna McDaniel says the RNC is going to sue Google since millions of their fundraising emails keep going into users’ spam boxes.



10:40 AM · Oct 5, 2022


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https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...VatZnSiM_wsdOw

For their part, Google has pushed back against the RNC chairwoman’s characterisation of their email server and has said that “politics or political affiliation play no role” in determining how communications are filtered.

“We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email. When Gmail users say that they don’t want to receive an email, we place the email in the spam folder, politics or political affiliation plays no role in this determination,” José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in an emailed statement to The Independent.



"We recently launched a Federal Election Commission approved pilot program with a small number of campaigns to study whether these changes improve the user experience during this election period. We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses,” he added.



Ms McDaniel has been raising this concern with the tech giant for months, writing in June that she had spotted the trend of email engagement dropping at the end of each month – typically when the committee is doing callouts for “important donation days”.


“Big Tech’s bias is out of control. Every single month – for 7 months in a row – Google has systematically attacked the RNC’s email fundraising during important donation days at the end of the month. Our emails go from strong inbox delivery (90-100%) down to 0%,” tweeted Ms McDaniel in June.



More recently, when Ms McDaniel said online that she’d noticed the trend for the 10th month in a row when email engagement began dropping at the end of September, she lashed out once more.
“This not only affects fundraising but get-out-the-vote efforts as well. We’re 40 days out from Election Day, we do not have transparency from Google, and we NEED a resolution immediately,” she tweeted on 29 September.

Ronna McDaniel

@GOPChairwoman

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Last night, @Google began suppressing @GOP’s emails for the 10TH MONTH IN A ROW. This not only affects fundraising but get-out-the-vote efforts as well. We’re 40 days out from Election Day, we do not have transparency from Google, and we NEED a resolution immediately.

3:35 PM · Sep 29, 2022


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Though no paperwork has yet to be filed, Ms McDaniel is hardly the first US politician to take Google to court for overstepping what they perceive as an apolitical line.


In 2019, US presidential Democratic candidate Tusli Gabbard claimed that the tech company was infringing on her free speech after it temporarily suspended her campaign’s advertising account after a debate ahead of the 2020 election.


Similar to Ms McDaniel, Ms Gabbard alleged in the lawsuit – believed to be the first time a presidential candidate has sued a major technology firm – that emails from her campaign were being sent to the spam folders at a “disproportionately high rate” when compared to other Democratic candidates, the New York Times reported at the time.


For their part, Google responded to Ms Gabbard’s lawsuit back in 2019 by stating that the company relies on an automated system that flags unusual activity on advertiser accounts to prevent fraud.
“In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” said Jose Castaneda, a spokesman for Google, to the Times. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/othe...rs/ar-AA12FHmw

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