US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson has accused Google’s Gmail of partisan behavior in a letter written to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Ferguson has alleged that Gmail’s spam filters routinely block messages from Republican senders, while a similar filter is not applied to Democrat senders.
In the letter penned to Pichai, Ferguson wrote, “My understanding from recent reporting is that Gmail’s spam filters routinely block messages from reaching consumers when those messages come from Republican senders but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats.”
“If Gmail’s filters keep Americans from receiving speech they expect, or donating as they see fit, the filters may harm American consumers and may violate the FTC Act’s prohibition of unfair or deceptive trade practices,” he added.
Meanwhile, Google denied the allegations made by the FTC chair in a statement made to news agency Reuters. The company stated that it applies similar spam filters regardless of the political ideology of the sender.
“Gmail’s spam filters look at a variety of objective signals – like whether people mark a particular email as spam, or if a particular ad agency is sending a high volume of emails that are often marked by people as spam. This applies equally to all senders, regardless of political ideology,” a Google spokesperson said.
The FTC chair also warned Pichai that if Google is not consistent with the FTC regulations, it “could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action.”
Notably, Republican leaders have a long history of accusing Big Tech of discriminating against conservative views. In the past, several Republicans have alleged that major tech companies have been shadow-banning right-leaning users and practicing targeted censorship.
During the US Presidential elections last year, the Republican attorney general of Missouri had said that he was launching an investigation into Google over allegations that it was censoring conservative speech.
The company had also defeated a Republican National Committee lawsuit against it last year, accusing the search giant of intentionally misdirecting Republican email messages to users’ spam folders.
