Political spam is going to start clogging up your Gmail inbox 

In elections, all means of campaigning are apparently on the table and considered fair and square. And sometimes, candidates might try to get into your email inbox in a desperate attempt for you to hear about them. Google has received backlash because Gmail's spam filters are apparently more likely to put Republican fundraisers and campaign emails in spam than Democratic ones, prompting GOP leadership to worry about political bias and introduce a bill in the Senate demanding accountability. In light of that, it looks like Google is preparing to take action itself, as the company is seemingly working on a program to keep those emails out of spam — which is probably bad news for you.

According to Axios (via 9to5Google), Google has asked the Federal Election Commission to authorize a program to keep campaign emails out of people's spam folders. The approach Google would be looking at would allow authorized candidate committees and PACs to be whitelisted from Google's spam filters as long as they don't otherwise include malware, phishing, or other illegal content. For most people, this will mean essentially more spam in their inbox. At least users will supposedly be asked if they want to keep hearing about a specific campaign the first time they receive an email about it, so some level of protection remains. In a statement, Google said the following:

We recently asked the FEC to authorize a pilot program that may help improve inboxing rates for political bulk senders and provide more transparency into email deliverability, while still letting users protect their inboxes by unsubscribing or labeling emails as spam. We look forward to exploring new ways to provide the best possible Gmail experience.

In the past, Google has rejected accusations of political bias, saying that the service looks at incoming emails from bulk senders and checks at multiple indicators, including users marking emails as spam.

Gmail employs a number of AI-driven filters that determine what gets marked as spam. These filters look at a variety of signals, including characteristics of the IP address, domains/subdomains, whether bulk senders are authenticated, and user input. User feedback, such as when a user marks a certain email as spam or signals they want a sender’s emails in their inbox, is key to this filtering process, and our filters learn from user actions.

Under that explanation, then, users could be marking GOP emails as spam more often, giving place to that perceived bias. This problem might be a home-made issue, too. The Verge reports that Trump campaign emails, in particular, have been accused of using bad-faith strategies such as misleading subject lines that suggest emails are coming from friends and family. This could lead many people to mark them as spam — and subsequently training Google's algorithms to do that, too.

The good part is that if this measure goes into effect, you'll be able to opt out very easily and not put up with political emails you don't want to see.

( Details and picture courtesy from Source, the content is auto-generated from RSS feed.)

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