John Paul M. Joaquin Tech 08.28.2023 06:Aug AM EDT

Republican Lawsuit Against Google Over Gmail Spam Filters Trashed

The Republican lawsuit against Google is now null and void.

A federal judge has recently dismissed a Republican lawsuit against Google for allegedly having a political bias over its Gmail spam filters over lack of evidence.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed the lawsuit in question sometime in 2022, but it is only now that the court has decided against it.

Not In Bad Faith

US District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed the RNC's lawsuit against Google's alleged political bias due to it not "sufficiently" pleading that the search giant acted in bad faith, per Engadget. They added that the search giant is protected by Section 230 of US law, which states that internet service providers (ISP) have "safe harbors" to operate as intermediaries of content without fear of being liable for that content. However, this statement is true only if the ISP takes reasonable steps to delete or prevent access to that content, per the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The RNC's lawsuit stated that Google intentionally marked "millions" of the Committee's emails as spam because of its political bias, as evidenced by the findings of an academic study it cited supporting the idea, per The Washington Post. As such, its lawsuit aims to get reimbursement for the donations it lost because of its political bias.

However, Judge Calbretta said that the RNC failed to "sufficiently [plead] that Google acted in bad faith," and that the lawsuit is a "close case." Google explained that the emails its Gmail service flagged as spam was likely due to users flagging them as such, among other reasons. These include the domain authentication issues and frequent mailouts the RNC cited as other potential issues.

Judge Calabretta and the court also decided that RNC email could be deemed "objectionable" based on the CAN-SPAM Act. However, the RNC is still welcome to amend its lawsuit to better establish Google's lack of good faith.

A Study in Political Bias By Email Service Providers

The study, "A Peek into the Political Biases in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms During US Election 2020," concluded that Gmail leaned towards the left (Democrats), while Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo leaned towards the right (Republicans).

Additionally, the study found that Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam compared to the left candidates. Meanwhile, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo marked 2.0.4% and 14.2% more emails from left-leaning candidates as spam compared to the right-leaning candidates, respectively.

While the study's conclusion is clear, one of its authors, Muhammad Shahzad, said to The Washington Post in 2022 that the RNC cherry-picked the study's findings to suit their lawsuit against Google. According to the author, the study demonstrates that a bias is present under certain circumstances across services, but it doesn't mean that it shows that someone is deliberately trying to turn the elections.

"Our study does not make any such conclusion," Shahzad said about the information the RNC cited in its lawsuit against Google. He also said that the political bias of spam filters in their "default behavior" disappeared when they simulated having users put in their preferences by marking some messages as spam and others as not.

When Shahzad and his co-writers did so, they saw that the biases in Gmail almost disappeared, while the political bias in Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo didn't.