FTC Chair Accuses Google Of Treating GOP's Emails As Spam

The Trump administration has accused Google of discriminating against Republicans' emails and warned that the tech giant could be in line for a crackdown.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson wrote [PDF] to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, citing a recent New York Post report that alleged Gmail was routinely flagging Republican fundraisers' emails as spam, while not doing the same to missives from their Democratic counterparts.

"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 wrote. "As the Chairman of the FTC, I write to inform you of your obligations under the FTC Act. Any act or practice inconsistent with these obligations could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action."

In the letter, Ferguson also noted a recent complaint from Republican senatorial and congressional committee chairs about "Big Tech suppression of conservative speech."

"A consumer's right to hear from candidates or parties, including solicitations for donations, is not diminished because that consumer's political preferences may run counter to your company's or your employees' political preferences," he sniped.

Google had not responded to El Reg's request for comment at the time of publication, but it did tell Reuters that 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."

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The essential complaint here is nothing new. A couple years back, Google got a federal court to toss a but-our-emails complaint by the Republican National Committee (RNC). The judge pointed out that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act meant Google couldn't be liable for its spam-filtering decisions, unless the Republicans could prove the company had acted in bad faith, which they hadn't.

The RNC had a second crack, only for the same judge to throw out the amended complaint last year.

But Section 230, which has allowed large US online platforms to flourish, is facing increased scrutiny.

Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has called for the 1996 provision to be reconsidered as it had allowed social media firms to get "more power over more speech than any institution in history." But it's not just a Republican push, with both sides recently threatening to introduce a bill that would sunset Section 230's Big Tech protections within two years. ®