The US has approved Google’s plan to allow political emails to bypass Gmail’s spam filter

The US Federal Election Commission has approved Google’s plan to allow the company’s emails to bypass Gmail’s spam filters. From the report: The FEC’s advisory opinion, adopted by a 4-1 vote, said Gmail’s pilot program was permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC rules “and would not result in prohibited in-kind contributions.” The FEC said Google’s approved plan is “a pilot program to test Gmail’s new design features for free on a nonpartisan basis for authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership PACs.” On July 1, Google asked the FEC for permission to implement the pilot project after Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. Republicans could reportedly avoid some of Gmail’s spam problems by using proper email configuration. In a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google’s chief legal officer, it said the “sharpest rebuke” came “from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was not reaching mailboxes,” The Washington Post reported in late July. “It was later determined that the reason was that the provider had not included an authentication tool that prevents messages from being marked as spam, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.” .