On August 11, 2022, the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted in favor of a draft advisory opinion allowing verified companies, political party committees and leadership groups to bypass spam filters and Gmail email client algorithms as part of Google's pilot project. As a result, such emails will be guaranteed to reach the recipient, bypassing the "Spam" folder.

The American IT giant has dominated the e-mail services industry for many years. According to forecasts, more than 1.8 billion people will use Gmail in 2022, while in 2019 this figure was 1.5 billion.

As Google's legal adviser Claire Rajan, a partner in the law firm «Allen & Overy», told the commission, "10 million emails end up in spam every minute." According to her, the new program will free registered senders from "forms of spam detection to which they would otherwise be exposed."

Analysts emphasize that Google's request came against the backdrop of the upcoming midterm elections and pressure from Republicans rushing to power. On June 15, Senator J. John Thune introduced the Law on Emails with Political Bias, according to which "email service providers are prohibited from using filtering algorithms to mark emails from political campaigns that consumers have chosen to receive as spam."

In turn, Google sent its request to the FEC on July 1. At the same time, when FEC chairman Allen Dickerson "pressed" Google's lawyer because of the Republican Party's complaints about the bias of the Gmail algorithm, Rajan insisted that this pilot program pursues commercial goals, not political ones.

He referred to a legal precedent in an earlier advisory opinion allowing Microsoft to provide enhanced security for campaigns for free. In his conclusion, it was stated that such services are aimed at improving the user experience and "proceed from commercial, not political considerations."

However, Rajan admitted that Google receives feedback from politicians on a daily basis and seeks to "improve its product."

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., has spent about $129.3 million on federal lobbying since 2014. According to a number of data, two firms registered to lobby for the interests of Alphabet Inc. directly addressed the Tun bill due to platform bias issues in the second quarter of 2022.

"The facts show that some participants in the technology industry demonstrate an undeniable ideological bias against conservatives," Mitch McConnell said in the Senate after the Law on Politically Biased emails was introduced.

Republicans began to be outraged after the party's fundraising declined in the second quarter of 2022. Online donations through the online platform WinRed, as reported by the New York Times, fell by 12% from the first to the second quarter, while contributions to the Democratic ActBlue increased by the same 12%.

Commissioner Trey Trainor cited the widely cited findings of researchers from North Carolina State University who found that spam filtering algorithms from the three largest email providers do show political bias, but not always against Republicans.

The research team created 102 email accounts and subscribed to political campaigns of both presidential candidates and 78 candidates for the Senate and 156 candidates for the House of Representatives from July 1 to November 30, 2020. As their analysis showed, Gmail sent 59% more emails from Republican candidates to spam, while Outlook and Yahoo sent more emails from Democrats to spam - about 20% and 14%, respectively.

Rajan, in turn, said that these conclusions were "distorted" and go beyond the scope of legal proceedings.

Against this background, from July 9 to August 2022, the Commission received more than 2,700 public comments. The overwhelming majority of them were categorically against this proposal.

The comments of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) opposing Google's pilot program raise concerns: "Republican campaigns, party committees and leadership groups – the very organizations that Google proposes to exclude from its spam filters - have used various fundraising methods aimed at misleading donors."

The DNC also stressed that the volumes, as well as the effect of these methods, are significant. Deceiving donors, forcing them to make regular contributions, pre–flagging emails, and other manipulations are all "predatory email tactics."

It is also noted that recently both parties have faced close attention to the practice of fundraising on the Internet.

In turn, Josh Nelson, CEO of Civic Shout, said: "Google should know that if it decides to move forward with its ridiculous and extremely unpopular plan to allow political campaigns to send spam emails without consequences, it will face an unprecedented negative reaction from its users, who overwhelmingly do not they want this change to happen."

He also provided comments, names and zip codes of 15166 Americans opposed to the pilot program of the IT giant.

"The proposal to allow political emails to bypass spam filters is a terribly bad idea. This not only allows anyone posing as a "politician" to spam me with impunity, but also encourages the most offensive and misleading forms of political advertising that will make political discourse even worse than it is," one respondent wrote.

Another commentator is more direct. "I don't care if the RNC thinks they are being discriminated against," he said, citing the need for additional research.

Rajan said these comments were an important part of the process, they reflect the fact that "people don't like spam."

Note that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) took a different approach to the pilot program. In a draft memorandum obtained by the Washington Post, the NRSC calls the pilot program "unacceptable," arguing that Google should instead allow "any 2022 campaign the opportunity to reset its email domain, restoring the reputation of email" – one of the factors that the Gmail algorithm pays attention to when determining whether whether the email is spam.

"We demand that all Republican senators receive mitigation, the same that Google has provided to several campaigns and committees," the NRSC memo says, according to The Washington Post. "This should be done in such a way that a warm-up period is not required, so that emails can be sent by campaigns at the same speed as they were sent before the reset, without being immediately marked as spam. The same option should also be available to all Democrats concerned about sending emails."

At the same time, Vice-Chairman Dara Lindenbaum said that she also "does not want" to support the pilot program, but will vote "yes" because "the precedents of the commission allow it." Lindenbaum also said she doesn't want to "hinder innovation and pilot programs."

The motion was passed by four votes of Dickerson, Lindenbaum, Trainor and Commissioner Sean Cooksey. Weintraub was the only voice of opposition, and Commissioner Shana Broussard abstained.