FTC chairman warns Google’s ‘Partisan’ Spam filters | Techcrunch

Andrew Ferguson, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission appointed by Trump, recently expressed his concern that “Alphabet’s administration of Gmail was designed to have partisan effects.”

In A letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar PichaiFerguson pointed it out A recent story in the New York Post describing complaints through targeted victory (a advice and PR company that is Worked together with the Republican National Committee and Elon Musk’s X) claim that Gmail e -mails mark that link to the Republican fundraising platform won as spam, without doing the same to E -mails linking to the Democratic Platform Actblue.

“My understanding of recent reporting is that the spam filters of Gmail block messages to reach consumers when those messages come from Republican senders, but do not block similar messages by Democrats,” Ferguson wrote.

He warned alphabet that if the filters of Gmail “Americans prevent from getting speech that they expect, or donate as they deem, the filters can harm US consumers and the prohibition of the FTC act of unfair or deceptive commercial practices”, which can lead to “an FTC research and potential enforcement action.”

In response, A Google spokesperson told Axios that the spam of gmail “looks at a variety of objective signals -such as people mark a certain e -mail as a spam, or or a certain advertising agency sends a large number of e -mails that are often characterized by people as spam”, and they said they said

The spokesperson also said: “We will assess this letter and look forward to constructive fascinating.”

Conservatives often complain that they are censored or otherwise treated by digital platforms, including Gmail. In 2023, the Federal Election Commission A complaint rejected from Republicans About Gmail’s spam filters, and also a federal court an RNC right case rejected with similar complaints. (The RNC seems to be breathe new life into that lawsuit.)

Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the FTC investigation into the left-leaning group media important about its investigation into anti-Semitic content on X, in which the investigation was described as ‘a retaliation act’.