Reports of Google planning to “un-spam” campaign emails from registered political parties in the US first emerged in June this year. The company wanted to distance itself from alleged partisanship. Political organizations complained that it was filtering emails from one party as spam more than the other. Of course, no one believed its claimed innocence on the matter. To prove that its spam filter algorithm is unbiased, it now wants to exempt all such emails from spam filter by default and leave it to users to decide. Google asked the FEC for an advisory opinion on the matter. The Commission took its own time and sought an opinion from the American public, even extending the deadline for it so more people can chime in with their thoughts. To no one’s surprise, pretty much every respondent opposed the idea. Nobody wanted to see political campaign emails cluttering their Gmail inbox. However, despite strong opposition from the public, the FEC last week voted 4-1 in favor of Google. The company has no goth the green light to proceed with its planned pilot. In a statement to 9to5Google, the tech giant said that it will monitor user feedback during this pilot to improve the implementation of this change.
Gmail users can manually opt-out from political emails
Google will allow Gmail users to manually opt out from receiving political campaign emails in their inboxes. The first such email will feature a “prominent notification” asking users whether they wish to continue receiving emails from the sender. This notification will likely appear the same way as current spam warnings on top of spam emails. If you say yes, nothing changes and you will continue to receive emails from that sender. But if you say no, Gmail will send all future emails from them to the spam folder. You can revert this at any time by marking the emails as not spam. Moreover, Google is also requiring campaign emails to have a “one-click unsubscribe” option. This will allow users to unsubscribe at any time if they miss out on the first ever email. “Our goal during this pilot program is to assess alternative ways of addressing concerns from bulk senders while giving users clear controls over their inboxes to minimize unwanted email,” Google said.
