FTC Claims Gmail Filtering Republican Emails Threatens 'American Freedoms' (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0178932074
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/1829229/ftc-claims-gmail-filtering-republican-emails-threatens-american-freedoms
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ftc-claims-gmail-filtering-republican-emails-threatens-american-freedoms/
> Ferguson sent a letter yesterday to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, accusing the company of "potential FTC Act violations related to partisan administration of Gmail." Ferguson's letter revives longstanding Republican complaints that were previously rejected by a federal judge and the Federal Election Commission.
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> "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," Ferguson wrote. The FTC chair cited a recent New York Post report on the alleged practice.
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> The letter told Pichai that 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." Ferguson added that any "act or practice inconsistent with" Google's obligations under the FTC Act "could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ftc-claims-gmail-filtering-republican-emails-threatens-american-freedoms/
Server Configuration (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't this all hashed out before, and it was determined that the email servers sending the Republican emails was misconfigured so the emails legimately looked like spam?
Re: Server Configuration (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much, yes.
There was also the problem that the begging letters from republicans generally looked more spammy. That and more people reported them as spam, which fed back to the filters.
Re: Server Configuration (Score:4, Informative)
And the e-mails probably [1]linked to untrustworthy news sites. [slashdot.org]
[1] https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/03/1821246/social-media-sanctions-hit-conservatives-more-but-due-to-content-sharing-study-says
Free speech (Score:2)
This does NOT mean anyone has to listen to it.
Nor does it mean you are obligated to receive spam emails
Re: (Score:2)
One would hope that is true. The real question is does "may violate the FTC Act's prohibition of unfair or deceptive trade practices" give any real legal basis for forcing Google to deliver political spam?
Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
Why are they sending unsolicited e-mail (spam) in the first place? That's exactly the type of thing a spam filter is supposed to catch.
Meanwhile.... (Score:3)
la Presidenta is rampaging among the media companies trying to shut down any organization that causes his dainty little panties to bunch up. When did Republicans turn into such whiny little children?
Re: (Score:3)
Making America Grate Again (spelling intentional)
Re: (Score:2)
> Making America Grate Again (spelling intentional)
Makes sense - they are a rather cheesy lot...
Re: (Score:3)
> When did Republicans turn into such whiny little children?
They've always been like that - they just had handlers and consultants to make sure their behaviour was hidden from the press and the electors. But nobody can tell this administration what to do or how to behave in public.
Can they prove... (Score:3)
...that otherwise-identical content is being treated differently just based on the sender?
I suspect not...
Re:Can they prove... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you read the article? They tested an identical email with the link target going to ActBlue versus WinRed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Who tested it? The test came from Targeted Victory a conservative consulting group and the NYP article links to this "demonstration video" of them sending bare links and one got flagged whihc while worthy of further investigation says really nothing.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is a matter for the courts or some type of public investigation before the FTC starts enacting widespread rule changes.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2lmcwAJfcc
Re: Can they prove... (Score:2)
That is not based on the sender.
Also, do you have any citation showing that link is not associated with more spam?
Re: (Score:2)
> That is not based on the sender.
True, but as the OP was asking about being treated differently on a single criterion, perhaps they hadn't noticed that something very similar had already been tried.
> Also, do you have any citation showing that link is not associated with more spam?
No, and I agree Occam says that's the best explanation.
Re: (Score:2)
Strange question, since when did trump and co need to prove anything? From what I understand anything the dear leader says is to be treated as fact, regardless of how provable false it is.
I think you are confusing common sense with the reality in the USA today. I believe 1984 was the instructional book and Idiocracy the resulting documentary for what is happening over there.
Re: (Score:2)
> Strange question, since when did trump and co need to prove anything? From what I understand anything the dear leader says is to be treated as fact, regardless of how provable false it is.
Yup. For example, he wants to fire a Federal Reserve Board Governor for cause because he says she (or someone) allegedly filled out a mortgage form incorrectly years before she became a Fed Governor, without any proof of wrongdoing, intentional or otherwise, without any charges, without an investigation or conviction *and* he says the Courts can't review his interpretation of "cause".
More so, the law says they can't be removed, except for specific reason, none of which seem applicable, but if he doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
> ...that otherwise-identical content is being treated differently just based on the sender?
> I suspect not...
Proof is beside the point. The Republicans are now in power in all branches of government with few checks and balances. When acting arbitrarily, neither proof nor due process is needed, especially when the Supreme Court will rubber stamp Republican actions.
Furthermore, these actions that seemingly baffle reason are mainly intended to rile up the base. Not only is proof not needed, but the resolution is also not needed. The accusation and the howling from the base is already success.
No first amendment protections. (Score:1, Troll)
It's not that Republicans have a right to spam the shit out of people. Obviously there are not first amendment protections for a private comapny to handle spam the way it wants to.
The issue is that gmail ONLY filters republican political spam. And while I don't think there is much legal standing for the FTC, this is quite frankly, hypocritical bullshit.
Anyone who can't see the blatant hypocrisy is either ignorant, an idiot or is duplicitous.
Re:No first amendment protections. (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's not that Republicans have a right to spam the shit out of people. Obviously there are not first amendment protections for a private comapny to handle spam the way it wants to. The issue is that gmail ONLY filters republican political spam. And while I don't think there is much legal standing for the FTC, this is quite frankly, hypocritical bullshit. Anyone who can't see the blatant hypocrisy is either ignorant, an idiot or is duplicitous.
Genuine question, because I'm a little confused by your phrasing...are you saying that Google should not have the legal right to process the data on their servers on the domain they own the way they wish? Or are you saying that Google does have the legal right, but that they should not for some reason?
The reason I ask is because Republicans (which this Andrew Ferguson is) have claimed for many years, to the point of conducting Congressional investigations, that there is something "wrong" with non-governmental companies "censoring" Republicans. For example, there were several hearings on how Twitter, prior to Musk purchasing it, did content moderation during the 2020 election cycle.
Oddly enough, however, after Musk purchased Twitter and blatantly, publicly, and obviously manipulated Twitter algorithms which push Republican agenda users and tampered down Democratic agenda users, those same Republicans were incredibly silent. In fact, I do not believe a Republican led Congressional committee has even once demanded Elon Musk appear before them to answer questions about how he is censoring Twitter.
So I am curious where you stand, because I do not think anyone who follows along very closely believes Mr. Ferguson is genuinely concerned about freedom of speech, but is most likely far more interested in making sure HIS party's speech is heard/seen. Since I could not figure out where you stood on this matter, I was curious if you agree with Mr. Ferguson's publicly stated position, his nakedly obvious partisan position, or on the side of the idea the company has the right to control the speech on their own platforms and it is just a matter of whether the company should do so or not.
I want to stress again, this is a genuine question. I know politics tends to generate snark and sarcasm, but this is neither. Just genuinely interested in what you meant in your post.
Re: (Score:2)
> are you saying that Google should not have the legal right to process the data on their servers on the domain they own the way they wish?
No. I am saying google has the right to do what they wish with their property.
I specifically said they're a private company and thus no one cam claim First Amendment protections (because they're not the government).
> Oddly enough, however, after Musk purchased Twitter and blatantly, publicly, and obviously manipulated Twitter algorithms which push Republican agenda users and tampered down Democratic agenda users, those same Republicans were incredibly silent.
Is it not Musks' property? Thus he gets to do with it as he wishes?
Or are you bringing it because you think someone else doing something wrong justifies another entity also doing wrong?
> So I am curious where you stand..
My position is that a private company has every right to filter as they wish on their platform, within the
Re: (Score:2)
They send more spam and thus more people click "this is spam" and the urls/lanaguage/etc that they use become indicative of spam (as judged by users).
That seems much more likely than google manually filtering republican spam.
I know managers at work sometimes ask to be added to automated mailing lists for technical things (disks are >X% full type stuff) and refuse to believe they won't want it when told what it will be. And then click "spam" on gmail and now the email address being used for them gets dive
Re: (Score:3)
> The issue is that gmail ONLY filters republican political spam. And while I don't think there is much legal standing for the FTC, this is quite frankly, hypocritical bullshit.
-Users overwhelmingly reported the republican political spam as spam; therefore the filters blocked it as known SPAM.
-Users did not report the democrat political spam as spam.
-The republican spam emails were not coming from properly configured servers (improper SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and PTR).
-The republican spam emails were sent from newly registered domains, hosted on 3rd party VPS with no history/reputation as "known good sender".
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigated this. Google offered to whit
reserve the right to filter my email (Score:4)
I am not obligated to accept email from anyone. I reserve my right to filter my email as I see fit. Good news is that I don't use Gmail. I run my own email server and I can do whatever I want with it, like block all political spam.
Republicans have been caught multiple times (Score:1, Troll)
Sending outright spam. They have sued Google more than once and lost because they are violating anti-spam policy.
If Democrats did the same thing they would also get their emails banned but here is the thing Democrats only doing that. So their emails get delivered.
As always fascism requires an in-group that the law protects but does not bind and an outgroup that the law binds but does not protect.
It's time to pick sides America and you know which one is the right one.
This is becasue GOP sends more unsolicited mail (Score:5, Informative)
In response to this article, the folks at [1]Koli-Lõks ran the numbers on their spam traps [linkedin.com] (aka email honeypots, these are mailboxes that do not receive legitimate or solicited mail). The resulting graph clearly indicates that Republicans send 20-60 times more unsolicited email than Democrats (as measured by winred.com vs actblue.com. That multiplier is eyeballed from the graph).
If you behave like a spammer and/or send mail that looks like spam, your content will be blocked as spam.
(Disclaimer: I'm in anti-spam. Nothing I've ever worked on has targeted anything political; we consider that a policy issue rather than security. If somebody reports political party mail to us (as either threat or benign, from any political party), we will not use it for training our systems in any direction. If general spam detection triggers on political mail and a recipient doesn't like that, they should allowlist the sender to bypass filtering. I am not representing my employer in this or my other posts.)
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/koli-l%C3%B5ks-o%C3%BC_recently-theres-been-some-talk-about-activity-7364362145318264832-rfWp
Re: (Score:2)
In response to this article, the folks at Koli-Lõks ran the numbers on their spam traps ..
Do they mean Koli-Lõks OÜ the USAID funded propaganda outfit ;)
[1]Koli-Lõks OÜ is a limited company registered in Estonia [koliloks.eu]
[1] https://koliloks.eu/
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, similar in the various anti-spam systems we run. Including PACs etc, the numbers are pretty clear, and the pecentages of spams are noticably higher for the GOP (not that the DEMs get a clean sheet either) in all of the following:
Emails that fail Bayes for spaminess.
Emails sent to spam traps.
Emails sent to non-US citizens (which, BTW, is against US campaign law if they're soliciting funds, so we forward all those to the FEC.
Emails sent to compromised email addresses (e.g. Company X gets their cu
Re: This is becasue GOP sends more unsolicited mai (Score:2)
> Emails sent to non-US citizens (which, BTW, is against US campaign law if they're soliciting funds, so we forward all those to the FEC.
Really? I get those from time to time. I assume nothing ever actually gets done about them of course.
Re: (Score:2)
A bit too early to tell, although I have my suspicions, but under previous administrations (including Trump 1.0) doing this a few times with each sender was a *very* effective unsubscribe function.
We've been over this (Score:5, Interesting)
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2024/... [theverge.com]
Gmail gave them instructions for not getting flagged which they ignored.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/1/24211217/judge-dismisses-republican-national-committee-gmail-spam-case
It's simple (Score:2)
Don't email hate messages and other content that get caught in spam filters. Why is it always the conservative nut bags who think they are getting censored, when all they do is spread a message of hate? Of course that shit is going to be blocked, god damn fucking consertard snowflakes.
Everything is a threat to freedom/emergency (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like damn near everything with this administration is some sort of "threat to freedom" or a "national emergency".
Bullshit. Spam is spam is spam. (Score:4, Informative)
Spam is spam, and bulk mail is always spam. Political bulk mail is poisonous spam.
backwards-upside-down world (Score:2)
Even if this was true (which is dubious at best considering the constant conservative whining about cancel culture) This would be a clear cut example of a PRIVATE company exercising it's rights to deliver to it's own users based it's own internal classification of what counts as junk mail.
The standard conservative answer to this sort of disagreement used to be "Change providers", "Work elsewhere", "Spin up your own version" and "Buy a different brand". The standard liberal answer was always "Write your cong
Because it is spam (Score:2)
This is expected. Republican fundraising emails look like the resulting offspring of a standard phishing email raping a 90s chain letter email. You know what I'm talking about: misspelled words, everything in upper case and in a myriad of colors - generally something that looks like it was written by a genuine retard. Why is it Google's fault that these emails match every single criteria for spam/phishing?
Bet you it is because of stupid money requests (Score:2)
I can guarantee that Google is not trying to stop Republican emails, that would be something only an idiot convicted of a felony would do, but instead has totally reasonable standards the Republicans fail to live up to.
I bet the emails from Democrats have words that attack Trump, and perhaps a request for an unspecified donation.
While the emails from 'Republicans" say things like "You must reply TODAY to get your free Maga Hat after paying $53 for shipping".
Simple solution. (Score:2)
Stop spamming people. Then your emails won't go into their spam folders.
Receive our emails (Score:5, Insightful)
Receive our emails, even if people mark them as spam. Otherwise, get sued.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You sir, are a paragon of the MAGA movement. Really nailing it representing the team today. So glad you could share with us.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> Waaaahhhh orange man bad
yes, pedophiles are bad, this we agree on!
How about not getting any? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a simple solution that seems to be being ignored: just block ALL emails from political parties regardless of who they are. That's completely non-partisan and while it may make every political party equally unhappy I suspect it will have exactly the opposite effect on the rest of us.
Re: (Score:2)
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah well, everything sounds simple to people who don't quite understand the nature of the actual problem, but here's a hint:
The next day after your "simple solution": "FTC sues Google claiming that it is identifying their non-political party emails as political party emails"
And text messages (Score:2)
I routinely mark all political text messages as junk too. Doesn't matter from who sent them, consistently applied junk marking.
Re: (Score:2)
> just block ALL emails from political parties
This is a game of cat and mouse. Political parties are not going to clearly identify themselves. I suspect Google's spam bots are blocking emails where the sender is being shameless in asking for money.
1. Send us money now or your kids' future is in jeopardy.
2. Gays are coming for all of us, send money now to save the country.
3. Buy shitcoins that are backed by president's family.